


Blaze

by LittleLinor



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Promare Fusion, Gen, M/M, Promare (2019) Spoilers, Team Demise Is There, There Are More Characters But I Only Tagged Those Who Play A Major Role
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: For Kouji Ibuki, the day, like many others, starts with a fire.It's one of the longest days of his life. And definitely the longest week.Cardfight Vanguard G/Promare fusion. Follows (mostly) the plot of Promare, with a lot of fun additions to explore the world more and use the cast to their maximum potential.Because we all need Chrono screaming RYUZUUU MYOUJIIIIIIIIIIIN in our lives.
Relationships: Anjou Tokoha & Anjou Mamoru, Anjou Tokoha & Ibuki Kouji & Kiba Shion, Ibuki Kouji/Shindou Chrono, Myoujin Ryuuzu/Shindou Rive
Comments: 58
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, it's me with Yet Another AU. I'm so sorry.  
> I wrote this during NaNo and IT'S ALREADY 90% FINISHED with only a couple of scenes missing in the middle so I'm fairly confident I can finish and post it within a Not Ridiculous Time Frame.
> 
> Obligatory Warnings: This has the level of violence you can expect from Promare itself and then some. In particular Ibuki's abuse was more deliberate and hands-on than Galo's and his trauma runs pretty deep. This fic gets into disability, suicidal ideation, and sometimes the links between the two, as well as in-universe suicide-baiting. Plus the canon torture, attempted genocide, etc etc. Bonus Terrible Parenting since Rive exists in this fic.  
> THAT BEING SAID, I tried to keep the deeply hopeful vibe and message of the original, so this isn't an edgy angstfest, it just... tackles those things. You know.
> 
> I'm going with the "the Burnish don't age" interpretation because it's more fun to play with. As for Ibuki, he's 22 when the plot happens (you could calculate that with the hints I leave in the text but I'm saving you the trouble)
> 
> PLEASE ENJOY, and check the end-of-chapter notes for concept art!

For Kouji Ibuki, the day, like many others, starts with a fire.  
It's one of the longest days of his life. And definitely the longest week.

“Burnish flames confirmed,” Chris calls out as their Burning Rescue truck speeds towards the site of the fire.  
Kouji checks his belt and closes his jacket's collar. Tokoha usually goes in first, but with the way things are, the both of them will probably be deployed immediately. The building is large, and a critical point of the city's anti-Burnish defense effort, at that.  
“Just _one time_ , can we have a _normal_ fire to deal with?” Tokoha grumbles, tightening her own belt. “Kouji, your ponytail is falling apart.”  
Before he has time to answer, she moves behind him and catches the escaped hair, pulling it back and up with the rest.  
“Sorry,” he says, quietly, but she just hums and pulls out a band of her own to tie it back up.  
“With the way the Myoujin Foundation has covered every square inch of the city in sprinklers, any normal fire would be doused before we even got out of the station,” Shion points out. He hasn't donned his fire jacket yet, and rarely does. If they need help, Chief Ryuutarou will take out the big guns. “See it as proof that they're actually working.”  
“If they're working so well why can't they douse _these_ flames, huh? That's the ones they're designed for in the first place!”  
When he first joined Burning Rescue, he was taken back by how _young_ some of his teammates are. Shion and Tokoha are both 19 now, but they're several years his seniors in terms of fire fighting experience. _Chris_ claims he's 20, but Kouji has some serious doubts about it. Why they'd send children to fight fires is beyond him.  
But the truth is (a very uncomfortable truth, that he discovered gradually over his first months there), Burning Rescue doesn't have much funding. If their own unit is so active, it's because out of the whole organisation, they have the best truck, the best equipment, the state of the art mechs. And _that_ 's because Shion has been funding them out of his own pocket and Chris has compulsive robot building syndrome and probably some shady investments somewhere too. No one questions it, because getting the job done is more important.  
He'd asked, once, why they were expected to stop fire with buckets and shoelaces. Ryuzu had explained that all the money he could invest was going towards the technology necessary to stop flames from being a danger at all. And Kouji can't deny that he _has_ been equipping the entire city with the technologies his labs crank out constantly.  
Still, he'd come out of that meeting feeling uneasy. But the situation was uneasy in the first place. He'd just have to do his best. To save everyone, until the city could be truly safe.  
“That's because Burnish flames are alive~” Chris says, spinning in his seat as the truck takes a sharp turn.  
Tokoha sighs.  
“Still hanging on to your pet theory, huh?”  
“You'll see I'm right someday.”  
“Hopefully not.”

When they reach the site, it's obvious why the sprinklers and various hoses aren't doing the job. The fire is _massive_ , flames licking the entire building as if embracing it, regardless of the actual source. Watching it, one could almost believe Chris is right.  
What _Kouji_ believes, confirmed by the little growl Ryuutarou gives as he takes in the scene, is that this fire is no accidental Burnish overdrive. It's too perfect, too sudden, too overwhelming. It was _planned_.  
And yet, judging from the number of people streaming out of the main door and running for their lives, most of the building's insides are still standing.  
It's not the first time they see a fire like that, where the goal seems to be more to scare and destroy than to kill. They've multiplied across the city in the last few months. As if someone was sending a message.  
“Most of the building's already evacuated,” Chris tells them over the intercom as Kouji and Tokoha strap inside their mechs. “But there's a group stranded on the 47th floor, and one that escaped to the roof.”  
“I'll take the first one,” Tokoha says. “I can manoeuvre in tight spaces better.”  
“Fine by me. Kouji, I hope you like heights.”  
“Just get it over with,” Kouji sighs, just before his mech shoots into the sky.  
“Hold on tight!” Chris calls out, a full second after launch.

The people on the roof are gathered in the centre, away from the flames licking up the sides of the building. Kouji deploys his container and herds them inside, and he's about to climb down the building with it when Chris's voice comes through the intercom again, sounding fully serious for once.  
“Kouji! Four Burnish signatures behind you!”  
He turns. Smoke's still obscuring the other half of the roof, but when he launches a scan, several beeps show up on his screen.  
“Kouji, drop the container. These guys aren't messing around.”  
“But—”  
“ _Drop the container!_ The parachutes'll slow it down, we'll catch it when it gets here.”  
Gritting his teeth, Kouji drops it. For a second, his heart stops beating, and then several parachutes deploy and halt its course down.  
“Kouji!” Shion's voice, this time. “Keep your eye on the enemy!”  
Well, he can't. The roof is still covered in smoke. But clearly the Burnish know they're here and aware of them. Otherwise why would they just wait in the shadows?  
_Show yourself, you murderers._  
Turning to fully face the roof, Kouji takes out his smoke dissipating extension.  
_I can't move too much air around…_  
Crouching, he turns the dial to the narrowest setting possible, and shoots the tornado right at the position of the hidden Burnish.

He expected humans. Instead, what he finds is three gigantic figures in black, looming and looking down at him, their teeth the only light on them save for the flames framing their bodies.  
And behind them, a majestic throne of flames, its back curving up like a pyre.  
Before he can see any more of it, the three large figures jump in front of him, close enough that he almost jumps back and into the void… and pose.  
_What…_  
“Kouji!”  
It's the Chief's voice this time, and he sounds as serious as Chris earlier. That's enough to tell him the gravity of the situation.  
“Kouji, you can't fight them on your own. That's…”  
“The Mad Burnish,” Kouji whispers. He knows.  
It's the first time he's been this close to one of the actual terrorists, and part of him has to admit that they're terrifying. But he refuses to back down. He _can't_. If they're left to their own devices, who's to say they won't attack the next building? Or the still evacuating civilians?  
He can't let anyone else die from these flames. He can't.  
And he can't fail Ryuzu, when Ryuzu personally recommended him for Burning Rescue despite their rule against recruiting people with fire-related trauma.  
(He can't fail, when he owes Ryuzu for everything he is and everything he has, and his life first of all.)  
“I'm coming to support you,” Ryuutarou's voice calls from the intercom. “Shion's almost ready too. Don't make any sudden moves.”  
“I'll keep them busy until then. We can't afford to let them move to a different target.”  
“ _Kouji_ —” He clicks his tongue, in either exasperation or worry. “Why are you suddenly so stubborn,” he mutters, before raising his voice again. “Listen. It's not just the Mad Burnish. The one behind them is their boss. Chris identified him. _Don't take him on._ ”  
The three figures have surrounded him, and one of them is already summoning what looks like a sword made out of the same flames that form their armour. Ibuki swallows and gets into fighting position.  
“I think it's a bit late for that.”  
“Oh come on!”  
“I think he's right, Chief,” Chris says. “Don't worry, I'll support him until you get there~”  
“Thank you,” Kouji breathes, just before the first Burnish attacks.  
It's a vertical swiping blow that reminds Kouji of the eastern martial arts that he's thankfully learned since he was little. For a fraction of second, he braces to block it, before remembering that his opponent is three times his size and that even Chris's mech probably won't withstand it if he takes the brunt of the hit head on.  
Gritting his teeth, he shifts his stance just slightly, and dives out of the way at the very last second, throwing his legs at the figure's right foot. He hits, but not fast enough: they stagger, but don't fall, and before he can react the second one's on him, their arm poised like a cannon, and a huge ball of flame comes at him.  
He barely gets out of the way. By then, the first Burnish is back in the game, and the third one is _behind him_ , and he has to dodge again as they attempt to bear hug him.  
He squeezes out just on time, but not without flames washing over his shield and obstructing his view.  
“Too slow,” he mutters to himself, teeth clenched. He's too slow. The mech is designed to withstand flames and support collapsing roofs, not dash around in high intensity, precise fights with giants who seem to know as much about martial arts as he does.  
But he can't stay on the defensive like this. Even just to buy time. At this rate, they're going to kill him before anyone else gets there. And if he dies, so does the first line of defense.  
“Need some help?”  
Chris's voice.  
“ _How_?”  
“I tinkered with your mech last weekend.”  
“ _What!?_ ”  
“Pull back a little, and make sure you're strapped in tight!”  
No choice. Kouji wouldn't put it past him to do whatever he's planned even if Kouji doesn't pull back.  
He dashes between the legs of the largest figure, and skids to a halt on the other side.  
“Now!”  
On the screen, Chris smirks.  
“Dran! Full power!”  
Ibuki's mech comes apart. It's a good thing he's indeed strapped on, because the cockpit gets thrown into the air again as the parts that used to form his arms and legs and shields fall off and reorganise themselves into a thinner, longer figure, 'hips' wider for stability. When he lands back in the middle of it, it clamps itself around him, reconnecting all his communications and movement inputs.  
Right on time. The Burnish are already on him.  
He jumps out of the way. This time, the mech obeys him instantly, projecting him far to the right with a flexibility that puts his actual body to shame. Surprised, he lets out a little noise of awe.  
“Wait until you see the best part before you swoon. Check your back. I gave you a matoi tech.”  
Ibuki pulls it out. It's balanced and powerful, weighted at both ends. Perfect for high speed attacks against opponents sturdier than him.  
It's not a sword, but having a weapon at all immediately makes him feel more comfortable.  
“It's faster, but you barely have any shields anymore,” Chris points out as he takes a battle stance. “Try not to get hit.”  
“Thank you,” Kouji breathes. “I appreciate it.”  
_Come at me._  
They do. The largest one comes first, attempting to grab him again, but Kouji hooks his weapon in their shoulder as they bend forward and _heaves_ , spinning himself under and behind them and _above_ with the momentum, releasing his weapon just long enough to aim at them from behind and shoot. The freezing shot hits them right in the nape, and ice surrounds their entire body, melting the fire armour until only a human shape remains in the center and falls, locked in ice.  
_One down._  
He shoots their wrists and feet for good measure. It won't last long against combined assault if the others decide to focus on their comrade instead of him, but he intends to keep them busy. And to make good on that, he launches a barrage of bullets at the second one, not enough to really freeze them but enough to knock their shooting arm aside.  
_They're keeping their distance. Not as used to combat. Their balance is off._  
He shoots forward. The Burnish keeps trying to shoot him, but they're slow, and the way they hold their arm steady before shooting is enough of a tell for him to dodge it. He runs to their side, behind, around. The Burnish tries to follow, shoots almost aimlessly as they spin.  
“Karl!”  
The third Burnish in armour cries out and runs towards them, but they're too late. While his opponent is distracted, Kouji rams his matoi right into their chest, sending them flying and on their back. He dodges the third one's sword, and shoots them before they can stand, covering them in ice.  
_Two down._  
Another sword swing. That one catches him on the arm, but he rolls from under it. His armour's dented, and smoking a little, but he'll live. Now if he can just take that one down…  
He risks a quick side look at the spot where their boss was earlier. He hasn't moved, still surveying the fight like a king watching his knight joust. He hasn't come to help them. He hasn't even bothered to arm himself, or to hide in one of their big armours. His face, as distant as it is, is still in plain view. His face, and that flame-like hair.  
The condescension in it makes Kouji sick.  
_You'll see. I'll make you regret not taking us seriously, you patronising terrorist. Every moment you waste watching me brings you closer to your doom._  
“Kouji, take it easy! Remember you can't take as much of a beating in this,” Chris reminds him.  
“I know. Where are the others?”  
“Chief's finishing up the evacuation. Shion's already climbing, and Tokoha's about to.”  
“Wait until you can all jump out at the same time. If we don't corner him properly, he might run once he sees he's outnumbered.”  
“What, and let you get slaughtered?”  
“He's not even moving from his spot. I'm gonna have to draw him out.”  
Chris sighs.  
“I swear, when did you become as much of a hothead as the others? It's gotta be all that fire.”  
_Fire can't burn me anymore._ He's lost too much to it already. Losing his sanity wouldn't make that much difference, at this point.  
The third Burnish comes at him again. Thankfully, it's a move he's familiar with. If they were equal in size, he wouldn't even need to break a sweat to disarm them.  
Well, he'll just have to do it differently.  
Rolling out of the way again, he runs to the crumbling remains of the roof's solar panels. His matoi tech goes back into its sheath; instead, he pulls a first metal beam from the wreckage, bends it, and sends it flying at the burnish. It's easily batted aside, but Kouji's already pulling out another beam, the remaining structure almost collapsing on him. He falters, more obviously than he really is. The Burnish raises their sword.  
_Come on… just a little closer..._  
Just as they bring the sword down, he stands properly again, and pushes his beam up. The sword connects in a shower of sparks and flames, but the beam holds, bending around it.  
_Now!_  
He pushes up, bends it further, and _twists_. The beam catches the sword and goes spinning out of their respective hands, leaving the Burnish weaponless and shocked for one second.  
One second is all Kouji needs.  
_Three down_ , he thinks as the Burnish falls, bound and frozen. _Now come at me._  
He stands. In the distance, the sirens from the main truck still blare, although their light is much too far away to pierce through the smoke. In front of him, at the other end of the roof, the elevated throne still burns, its flames reaching towards the sky. Kouji walks forward.  
The “boss” sitting on the throne looks down at him. His hair, that Kouji had barely caught sight of earlier, radiates from his face like flames, red and pink, like an embrace of normal and Burnish fire. His eyes, shining in the smoke-obscured darkness, are piercing green, burning like a blaze of their own.  
But what shocks Kouji is how _young_ he looks. Younger than him, than Shion and Tokoha even. Physical appearance can be treacherous when it comes to Burnish, but this boy doesn't look any older than fifteen or sixteen. And how much of that comes from the throne and the position and the tight, militaristic clothes?  
But no matter how young he may or may not be, this boy—or man, whichever it is—is still the leader of a terrorist organisation. Kouji can't take him lightly.  
He steps even closer.  
“What now?” he calls. “Are you going to fight me? Or should I just take your sidekicks and go? You don't seem in too much of a hurry to protect them.”  
The young man's eyes blaze. If he'd thought they looked on fire earlier, now they're an inferno, and the flames around him start moving, twirling, gathering into a tornado with him at its core.  
“We gave you a chance to run,” he says, quiet but deep, rough like a snarl. “Burnish do not kill for no reason. But I see you don't care for our generosity.”  
“It's far too late for that,” Kouji hisses. “Now fight me.”  
Kouji's ears ring. All the fire in the area seems to slow, almost to freeze, and at the edge of his perception, voices like a thousand distant screams seem to breathe in unison. And then the flames rush up towards the young man, absorbed by his tornado, obscuring him from view. And when Kouji can see again, he's changed, standing tall where his throne used to be, a tall, lean figure with a long trailing tail, stray flames fluttering behind him like a cape.  
He lowers his hands. Fire shoots from them, lifting him off the ground, towering far above Kouji.  
And then he drops down towards him at full speed.

It takes Kouji about half a second to understand that he doesn't stand a chance.  
The other Burnish had been fast, or powerful. This person is both, and far more than his sidekicks. He shoots to the ground, and Kouji barely manages to dodge out of the way, and instead of crashing down on the roof, the Burnish twists, his feet lighting up like his hands had and correcting the trajectory, and he swerves, right towards where Kouji has dodged, fast as a bullet.  
The impact hits him right in the chest. It winds him even through the armour, some of the mech's walls crushing down on him and bruising his ribs. He gasps, and tries desperately to catch his footing, but the Burnish's attack has sent him flying too far. The sky rushes past. The edge of the roof rushes towards him.  
In a desperate rush of adrenaline, Kouji throws his arms up and grabs on to a broken piece of wall. It bends, and pain shoots through his arms, but he hangs on, takes the momentum's backlash without letting go, and a second later he's just wrapped around it, safe and trying to catch his breath.  
Or maybe not so safe. If the impact's had any effect on the Burnish at all, he doesn't show it, and instead stands back, fluid as a snake. And right away he's coming at Kouji again, skating on the debris-covered roof as easily as a breeze on water.  
“Kouji!” Tokoha yells.  
“I—I'm fine. Don't move yet.”  
“But!”  
Kouji heaves himself back onto the roof proper. His entire body is screaming, from his ribs to his arms to his legs growing sore from the effort of pushing him back upright every time. His armour is broken, the mech's machinery exposed in several parts, some of its pieces outright detached and laying on the floor where the Burnish hit him.  
But if there's one thing years of martial arts and of being punished for being _Governor's pet_ have taught him, it's how to keep fighting until he drops, no matter the pain. To never drop his weapon, even when his arms are shaking.  
Somehow, the matoi tech is still sheathed at his back. He draws it, and faces his incoming opponent.  
“I'll keep him near the edge,” he tells his teammates. “Be careful, he can fly. Don't leave the air open.”  
“Hrrrrrrg…”  
She growls, but doesn't come out of hiding.  
“One more minute, Kouji,” Chris calls. “Don't die!”  
“I'll try.”  
The Burnish comes. Kouji uses his weapon to deflect the blow. It's all he can do: his opponent is clearly faster than him, and has size on his side. But rather than escape his blows or try to withstand them, he can use them to his own advantage and hold his own, for a little while at least. He might not be able to fly and skate around like lightning, but what he _can_ do faster than his opponent is twist his body, his wrists. Just enough to redirect the force thrown at him. Just like one redirects a coming sword to the side to open up one's opponent's guard and throat.  
_Just one minute._  
The blows keep coming. The Burnish is in perpetual movement, like flame itself, spinning like the core of his body is his only centre of gravity, his lever on which he can move the world. He spins around that, the speed of his limbs hammering at Kouji with momentum that never quite goes astray, hand, foot, hand, foot, foot, hand, _tail_ —  
He sees it coming too late. The Bunish's tail lashes at him from behind, sends him spinning, wraps around him before he can catch himself. The lightweight walls of his new mech dent, crush at him. He cries out, struggling to _see_ with the pain shooting through him and the compression of his lungs.  
_Emergency freezing system…_ he reminds himself, dizzy and desperate. _If I can just…_  
But his arm, caught like it is, can't reach.  
“Yield,” the soft yet hoarse voice comes, from the inhuman face now less than a metre away from Kouji's own, bared by the broken glass. His teeth alone are the size of Kouji's head. “You can't fight anymore. This is your last chance.”  
Kouji's head spins. But he still gathers enough strength to shoot the young man a look of anger and contempt.  
“Would that make you feel better? I'm already at your mercy.”  
The Burnish sighs. Kouji feels it through both their armours, sparks brushing and breaking against his skin.  
“What do you think the Mad Burnish _are_?” He shakes his head. “I guess Myoujin's propaganda machine is well oiled.”  
Kouji's heart flares.  
“Well… if you have nothing better…”  
The Burnish's hold tightens. Kouji's eyes darken, fill with stars.  
“AREN'T YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING?”  
The grip lightens, just a bit. Kouji hacks and coughs, and blinks sight back into his eyes just on time to see Tokoha descending on them from behind, her hammer raised.  
The Burnish turns, and throws himself to one side, Kouji to the other. His back hits the ground hard. Above him, the small, nimble shape of Shion's mech dashes towards their opponent.  
“I'll have to thank you for being so condescendingly slow,” he calls, and the impact of their collision makes the ground tremble, “but picking on beginners like this is distasteful.”  
Kouji struggles to sit up. The both of them are fighting the Burnish, keeping him on his toes—but barely. A sudden crouch and spin, and he sends them stumbling back, just for a second—but a second is all he needs to shoot up and towards the sky.  
Where a heavy, weighted net falls and traps him, slowly falling and tangling, until the gigantic shape of Chief Ryuutarou's building support mech grabs its anchoring ropes and pulls it closed, slams it to the ground with the Burnish still in it.  
This time, it's him who cries out in pain.  
The net freezes, crystalises. Flames erupt to try and melt it, but Shion and Tokoha shoot it, again and again, keeping them down, and then the Chief's ice cannon blasts at it in a long, continuous, gigantic ray, and the entire net freezes into a giant iceberg.  
The armour within dissipates. As the ice starts cracking, a small black-clad shape with flame hair falls.

They're on him before he can react. Tokoha shoots his ankles and wrists, and his neck for good measure, muttering something about terrorists thinking they can get away with hurting her friends, and Shion forces him to his knees, keeping the end of his own freeze gun on the back of his head.  
Wincing, Kouji tries to get back to his feet, and stumbles into the suddenly waiting arms of Chief Ryuutarou instead.  
“Easy there, Kouji. You did a good job.”  
Kouji gasps in pain.  
“The new mech…”  
“Machines can be replaced. You can't.”  
“… I suppose.”  
The Chief helps him to his feet. And then hits the top of his head. Kouji sees stars again.  
“And _that_ 's for thinking it's a good idea to fight a terrorist leader in fire fighting equipment.”  
“Chief, you'll give him extra head trauma, and then we'll have saved his life for nothing,” Chris points out, projecting his face from Ryuutarou's mech onto a holographic screen and not sounding too genuinely worried. “We can't afford to lose more personnel, you know. Recruits aren't exactly fighting at the door.”  
“Don't joke about that,” Ryuutarou mutters, but he picks Kouji up and carries him to where the others are keeping the leaders of the Mad Burnish under control.

“Good job, Kouji,” Tokoha calls out as he's thankfully set back on his feet. “So, do you like the power of our teamwork?” she asks the now unmasked Burnish.  
Up close, his face looks even younger. Smooth, and almost delicate compared to the harshness of the colours lighting it, the green eyes and red hair that almost make Kouji's hand reach for his own freeze gun on reflex. But the light in his eyes feels old. Old and tired and angry. And burning, even as he's kneeling on the ground with his hands tied and a freeze gun pressed to the back of his head.  
Kouji doesn't think this person could ever stop burning even if he tried.  
And isn't that what the Burnish are?  
He knows, if he's honest with himself, that none of them can help being what they are. That most of them keep the flames under tight control, and try their best to live normal lives. But he's lost too much and too many to flames, and an angry, hurt, tired part of himself always whispers that if _he_ was such a danger to others, he would rather just die.  
“Leaving one of yours to get pummeled to death until you can all jump out and find safety in numbers?” the Burnish asks. “That's your idea of teamwork?”  
“Bold words from someone who didn't move a finger for his own subordinates,” Shion sighs.  
“So,” Chris asks, projecting his face again, Dran perched on his shoulders, “what do we do with him?”  
“Don't get too fired up,” Ryuutarou sighs. “They're probably on their way already.”  
“They?” Tokoha asks, but right away understanding hits her and she groans. “Oh. _Great_.”  
“Do we have to?” Chris asks. “If we go now I'm sure we can make it to the Foundation office before—”  
The telltale noise of helicopters rings in the air.  
“Well that was nice while it lasted,” Tokoha sighs.

The leader of Freeze Force, a tall man with long purple hair by the name of Kanzaki who Kouji has run into a few times at the Foudation, wastes no time in making demands.  
“We're taking the terrorist.”  
Kouji sighs.  
“Do as you wish.”  
Kanzaki frowns, and moves into his personal space, although he doesn't deign bend down to his level.  
“Don't think you'll garner attention from Governor Ryuzu with this little stunt. Fighting Burnish terrorists is Freeze Force's prerogative. Be grateful I'm not writing you up for overstepping your bounds.”  
“Would you rather I let him cause more damage?”  
Kanzaki's eyes tighten into almost slits.  
“I'm overlooking it _this_ time. For the sake of the public. Don't step out of line again.”  
“Stop trying to intimidate my recruits,” Ryuutarou says, walking between them. “You have what you want, now go lock him up or whatever it is you people do.”  
Kanzaki stares him down.  
“… hmph,” he finally huffs, turning away. “Shinonome. Hashima. Collect the small fry.”  
“Yes, Sir~” a man with short blue hair calls, stepping out from behind him and towards the fallen Burnish.  
“There's only three of them,” the woman who came with them says, disinterested. “And all the fighting's already done.”  
“What, will you leave me to do all the work myself? How cruel, Rin. How about you, Shion? Won't you help a poor soldier in distress?”  
“I wouldn't want to 'overstep my bounds',” Shion says, smiling.  
Shinonome smirks back.  
“As you wish.”  
He takes out a long chain and twirls it for a second before throwing it at the Burnish's feet. It wraps around them, and he pulls them closer.  
Kanzaki, meanwhile, walks towards the leader and grabs him by the front of his shirt.  
“You and your little group have escaped us for long enough. Now you'll taste the strength of justice.”  
The Burnish stares him down, but doesn't say a word.

“I really hate this guy,” Ryuutarou grumbles as the Freeze Force helicopters fly away.  
“Why's she even _there_ if she's not going to work,” Tokoha rants on her side.  
“Guys, I know you're all wound up about all your rivals strutting in front of you, but I finally put out the rest of the fire, so maybe we should get Kouji some medical attention before he bleeds out.”  
They all turn towards Kouji at Chris's words. He looks away, willing his legs not to shake.  
“I'm fine.”  
“No,” Chief Ryuutarou says, “he's right. Tokoha, Shion, you get back down the way we came. Chris, can you send us a drone?”  
“On it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is titled Blaze in honour of Mamoru Anjou's forever departed stride sequence. Justice for Mamoru.
> 
> Anyway, here's some concepts of [Burning Rescue](https://twitter.com/linsartecutions/status/1191185533478821889), [the Mad Burnish](https://twitter.com/linsartecutions/status/1191198101949865984), and [Freeze Force](https://twitter.com/linsartecutions/status/1191203199753105409).  
> I'll post more when the characters come into the picture.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCOME BACK and welcome to Chrono POV.   
> There'll be POV switches in this fic, but I'll try to keep them clear and easy to pinpoint.

The helicopter flies above what looks to be a frozen wasteland.  
It's strange, how some pockets of it have survived. Much of the Earth is warmer now, after the eruptions that peppered the great fire. Or so he's learned. It's not like he was there to see the world before—or if he was, he doesn't remember it.  
It's been thirty years since the Burnish first burst into flame and the resulting hatred spread across the Earth like so much wildfire. Chrono has been fighting for fifteen.  
He doesn't remember anything else.  
The helicopter lands. The ground under it is frozen metal, and all around them, Chrono sees water. Icy water almost as far as he can see, and mountains beyond that.  
 _No escape except by air_ , he calculates, counting the other aircrafts. An underground bunker would have been worse, but not by much. If there are only a few dozen people inside, they'll be fine. But otherwise…   
_They must have lifeboats too_ , he tells himself. _If the place goes up into flames, they need a way to escape. I just have to find them._  
“Hey! Keep your hands to yourself!”  
He turns. Tsuneto's hauling himself back to his feet, glaring at the Freeze Force soldier who pushed him out of the helicopter.  
At least, the three of them are all right. A little roughed up, but alive. Maybe it was a blessing that they ran into those firefighters instead of their expected opponents after all. Getting defeated in a believable way was a little harder, but at least the young man with white hair and his friends had been surprisingly fair-play. Naively so, almost. If Freeze Force had found them first, Chrono wouldn't have put it past them to kill at least one of them, just for the example.  
Or just for fun.  
His stomach had been twisted with it the entire time. They'd insisted on coming to protect him, and he knew he needed their help for the jailbreak operation, but he's never taken well to the idea of acceptable sacrifices. When all four of them were hauled into the helicopter alive, he'd almost collapsed from relief.  
“Tsuneto,” he calls, not too loud. At his voice, Tsuneto immediately stops glaring at the soldier and comes to stand behind him.  
“Sorry, Boss.”  
“Don't antagonise them. I don't want us to get separated.”  
Karl and Kei fall in line behind them. They're bruised up, but the ankle pain Kei had mentioned early in the flight doesn't seem to be making him limp. Small blessings.  
The tip of a gun comes to rest against his neck. Chrono fights off the urge to send the soldiers flying. Well, at least they're focusing on him.  
“Move,” the soldier says. They move.

The inside of the building is as frozen as the outside. No doubt the guards have heated rooms, but the corridors are almost slippery with ice. It feels more like a walk-in freezer than a prison, and looks like it too. All that he can see are doors, large ones, and not a sign of an actual living space anywhere.  
Even animals get better treatment.  
One door finally opens, and the four of them are unceremoniously shoved inside.   
Chrono lands first. The three of them crash on top of him. He struggles for air.  
“Boss! Boss, are you okay?!”  
They scramble off him. Gasping, he rolls to his back.  
“I'm… I'm fine.”  
He takes a breath. Another. His eyes adjust to the darkness.  
They're surrounded by people. Of all ages and genders, small children to elderly men. All of them look scared. Most of them are sporting bandages, and some clearly missing parts of their bodies.  
In all of them, the voice of the flames cries, angry, scared, forlorn.  
His people.  
They stare at him. He gets back to his feet, trying to think of something to _say_ , trying to stomach the horror he'd suspected but hadn't yet been fully confronted to.  
His people.  
Rage rises in him, and powerlessness, the flames whispering to him, _burn it all down_. _Make them pay_ , they whisper, but he shakes his head, keeping them under control. That's not what he's here for.  
“Chrono?”  
He turns. A broad man with short hair sits against a wall, a small doll in his lap.  
“… Takeru?”  
Takeru laughs, weakly.  
“Recognise me?”  
Chrono walks up to him and kneels at his side.  
“Of course. When did you get here? What happened? Did you find your brother?”  
“Oh, I found him all right. But then the hospital staff thought I was suspicious. And then they found _me_ too.”  
“… I'm sorry.”  
“Eh, it's fine. I got to see him, at least.” He takes the doll, holds it up just above the ground, tilting it playfully from side to side. “They said he'll walk again if he keeps at it.”  
“That's good…”  
“… he said he doesn't blame me. I barely see him for five minutes and he just _says_ that—”  
“Takeru… it wasn't your fault. You were trying to protect him.”  
“I'm still the one who hurt him.”  
“That was an accident. And it looks like even he knows it.” He takes Takeru's shoulder. “I'm sure he wants you to come back. So hang on until he can walk. We'll find you somewhere safe to go together.”  
Takeru smiles.  
“Would be nice, huh?” He sighs. “But if even _you_ got caught, I don't see any of us getting out of here anytime soon. Except on the wind maybe.”  
“… don't count us out just yet.”

Around them, whispers have started to course.  
 _Chrono?_  
 _He's the famous leader they've been talking about? But he's so young._  
 _You know that doesn't mean anything._  
 _I know him… he took care of me when my mom died…_  
 _Huh? Wasn't that years ago?_  
“Chrono?”  
A girl's voice. He shoots Takeru a reassuring smile and stands to face her. She's about his size, and one of the better-faring people in the cell. Her tired face clearly has seen better days, and her long pink hair is in disaray, but she looks otherwise healthy.  
“Are you the leader they've been talking about? Someone said there was a shelter…” She stops herself. “Ah—sorry. My name's Luna.”  
“It's me, yeah.” He pauses. Her face seems familiar. “Have I met you before?”  
She laughs a little.  
“Oh, if you've been to Promepolis in the last two years, you probably saw Am and I on some poster somewhere. We were idols, you know. Until, well… last month…”  
It's not hard to understand what happened. As idols, they'd have been under close scrutiny by default. The moment one or the other turned, _someone_ would have noticed, even if their awakening wasn't destructive.  
“… I've been a few times.”  
“At least four, right?” another feminine voice says. A girl with blue hair walks out of the gloom and towards them, standing next to Luna, intimately close. As Chrono meets her eyes, she smirks. “You were on the news a lot. Although they never showed us your face.”  
“… I was trying to deliver a warning,” Chrono sighs.  
“If anything, I think it just made them pull the noose tighter. You'd be surprised at how good they are at not mentioning the number of victims.” She chuckles. “Well, it's not hard not to talk about what doesn't exist.”  
“You mean they've been saying we killed people!?” Tsuneto cries out, angry enough that flames burst out of his hands. They're immediately extinguished.  
“They don't have to say it. All they have to do is show the right footage of people running away from the buildings screaming. Cut to the paramedics rushing to help. Never mention how many were injured or killed. And then open their news with 'The Mad Burnish, who are responsible for thousands of deaths,' as if that wasn't thirty years ago.”  
Chrono swears under his breath.  
“… maybe we should have seen this coming,” Karl sighs, dejected.  
“… I know. It's my fault. I didn't think…”  
 _I didn't think he'd go this far._ As if propaganda hadn't always been Myoujin's strong point.  
Even the civilian firefighters thought them murderers. He should really have seen it coming.  
“Well,” he sighs, “there's not much we can do about it now.”  
“What do we do now?” Kei asks. He's already started working on tying better bandages on those who need it, and a spark of pride heats Chrono's stomach. His subordinates might be stubborn and rash, but they're good people.  
He sits, and closes his eyes, focusing on his fire, making absolutely sure he has it under control, ready to overflow the second he calls for it. They'll only really get one chance.  
“Now, we wait.”

_

They give him painkillers for the ceremony.  
Under his uniform, the bandages don't show too much. As he stands on the stage listening to Ryuzu's speech about the heroes who finally apprehended the dangerous terrorists, Kouji wonders if it's really okay for him to be there.  
He didn't actually defeat the Mad Burnish leader. All he did was stall him long enough for the rest of his team to intervene. Had he been on his own, he would be dead by now.  
“Standing up to him even if you didn't stand a chance is what was heroic,” Ryuutarou had said when he pointed it out. “You earned that honour more than any of us. Accept praise for once in your life.”  
So there he is, on a stage, in front of all of Promepolis's elites and a good number of its population, knowing even more of them are watching, from the giant screens in the street or in front of their televisions in their homes. Being given a medal for being rash enough to trick a criminal into a false sense of security.  
But despite his doubts, the smile on Ryuzu's face as he turns to him and asks him to come forward makes his chest twist with warmth.  
It's both pride and shame. The joy of being recognised as worthy, of making his mentor proud of him, of paying back some of what he did for him. The shame of being given attention that he doesn't deserve.  
“You did well, Kouji,” Ryuzu says, smiling at him. “Thanks to you and your friends, Promepolis can finally sleep without fear.”  
“… thank you.”  
On the other side of the stage, Kanzaki, Freeze Force's general, glares at him. He tells himself it doesn't matter.  
All that matters, regardless of who caught him, is that the criminal terrorising Promepolis has been put out of commission. Neither his pride nor his shame matter, in the end.

“Haha, you shouldn't be so humble! Come on, that one's on me.”  
The chronically boisterous waiter of Coffee Capital slams Kouji's drink on the table. It's a nice place, not far from the station, and since he only really goes back to what officially serves as his apartment once every five days and its state of comfort is about what one would expect from a place that sees him a few hours a week, he's taken to spending a lot of his breaks outside instead.  
Also, their coffee is good.   
“Is that coming out of your wages, Kamui?” the owner calls from behind the counter.  
“Urgh. Fine. I won't go back on a promise.”  
“It's fine,” Kouji starts, but then the owner smiles, and comes towards him with a small plate sporting a slice of cake.  
“Don't worry about it,” the owner says. “It's on the house. This too.”  
Kamui splutters.  
“Wh—Shin, you were teasing me?”  
“Making promises that rely on others is a bad habit.”  
“I knew you'd agree he deserved it!”  
Ibuki picks up his coffee.  
“Thank you.”  
The owner smiles.  
“Don't mention it. You went through a lot.”  
“Our city's a lot safer, thanks to you,” Kamui says. “Gotta thank you for ridding us of these terrorists. Seriously, what are they _thinking_ , setting buildings on fire like that. _Some_ people are just trying to live their lives without having to deal with this all the time.”  
“Kamui,” the owner says, “If you have energy to rant, then you have energy to work. I see you still haven't cleaned those tables.”  
“But there's no one else _there_!”  
“And there won't be if they see dirty tables through the window. Hop to it.”  
Grumbling, Kamui picks up his cloth and goes to clean the other booths. Kouji sips his tea, silently and guiltily grateful.  
He likes Kamui, if he's fully honest. The cheerful waiter's always treated him kindly and acted like he isn't a ball of trauma and gloom on two legs. He's always talked to Kouji like he's _normal_. Kouji wouldn't go as far as to call him a friend, he doesn't feel like he's close enough to claim that right, but aside from Tokoha, and to a certain degree the rest of his squad, he's certainly the closest Kouji has to one.  
But right now, he doesn't want to hear more about terrorists. He doesn't want to hear more about the hero he's pretending to be. He just wants coffee and quiet.  
At least he's been given an extra rest day to heal from his injuries, with his return to active duty dependent on a doctor's greenlight, so he has all the time to properly enjoy it.  
So there he is, sitting in the less conspicuous corner of the coffee shop, with Dran downing a strawberry milkshake across the table from him. Kouji half suspects the squad to have dispatched him to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't get himself into trouble.  
“How are your injuries?” the owner asks as he puts his coffee down and tries a bite of the cake. “Your Captain told me what happened,” he adds with a wink when Kouji looks up at him, suspicious. The news hadn't mentioned that he was injured.  
“I'll be fine. It's just bruised ribs, nothing broke.”  
“That's good to hear. You're sturdier than you look.”  
“… I've always been resilient.”  
Resilient enough to survive when the rest of his family didn't. He doesn't like thinking about it.  
“Still, you should take it easy. It wouldn't do if you got yourself hurt _now_.”  
“I have the day off, but I can't slack off while I'm on du…”  
He trails off as Shin suddenly frowns, his usually cheerful face tense.  
“Kamui,” he calls, sharp and clear.  
“I can't go faster than this okay!”  
“Get back into the kitchen.”  
“Huh!?”  
“Get back into the kitchen. _Now_.”  
Staring at Shin like he's lost his mind, Kamui picks up his cloth and walks towards the kitchen. He shoots Kouji a look that's clearly begging him to agree with his assessment of Shin's sanity, but Kouji's already focusing on something else, distracted by the noise that's starting to reach his ears and make Dran fidget nervously.  
The sound of a helicopter.  
Any attempts of his brain to rationalise that it could be going _anywhere_ and that civilian helicopters actually exist are quickly shoved aside as the noise grows louder and a woman in the street looks up, only to scramble after her hat as it flies away.  
But why? Why would they ever come _here_?  
He doesn't get time to even finish his thought. He's still staring when the door breaks inward, when people in fireproof armour stream into the small, quiet café, when Kanzaki walks in after them, slow and satisfied and commanding.  
It's only when he gestures and every Freeze Force soldier points their gun at Shin's head that Kouji's body finally moves.  
“Wait!” he cries. “What are you—”  
A ray of ice shoots past his cheek, catching some stray strands of hair in ice.  
“I wouldn't move if I were you,” Shinonome honeys, stepping from behind Kanzaki with a sweet smile and a still misted gun. “You wouldn't want us to mistake you for a terrorist, would you? Simple mistakes can have such dreadful consequences, you know...”  
 _Civilians. They're shooting unarmed civilians._ The freeze guns developped by the Myoujin Foundation weren't lethal to non-burnish humans, but they could still do lasting damage, especially if the head was hit or the victim was left frozen for too long.  
“There are no Burnish here,” Kouji says, willing his voice not to tremble and only succeeding from years of experience at being empty. “You have no right to be shooting at civilians.”  
“When dealing with terrorists,” Kanzaki declares, loud and slow, “we have every right.”  
“This is a café!”  
“ _Do you think Burnish wear a uniform?_ ” he bellows. “ _That they will not hide like rats in our city, our houses, so they can stab us from behind?_ ”  
 _But_ , Kouji almost says, but it's then that he notices the unnatural stillness of the café, the panic that hasn't started the moment the soldiers entered. The calm, level way Shin is staring at Kanzaki.  
And then the door to the kitchen opens.  
“Shin!”  
Shin's eyes widen. He turns, faster than anyone else can react, yells at the panicked, dumbstruck Kamui.  
“Kamui! I told you to get _out_!”  
“Shin, what are—” He takes in all the guns pointed at Shin, but they all turn to him instead, and before anyone can react, Shin's body bursts into flames, filling the room and creating a wall of fire between Kamui and the rest.  
“Run!”  
Kamui freezes. The first soldiers recover their wits and shoot at Shin; he extends his other hand and meets every ray of ice with flames of his own. Fire flies through the room; a stream of it comes straight at Kouji, and he barely dodges it, covering Dran's body with his own.  
A yell. He looks up; a wider ray of ice, like a cannon, has nailed Shin to the floor.  
“What a bother,” Hashima sighs, lifting the cannon from her shoulder.  
Kouji struggles to his feet, pushing aside the half burned table he was seated at just a minute ago. But before he can move, Kamui's thrown himself between Shin and the soldiers, trembling in both anger and fear.  
“Leave him alone! He didn't do anything!”  
“How interesting,” Shinonome says. “We had reports that a Burnish was being hidden in this café. We never thought that even the owner would be a terrorist. We're ever so grateful to you for leading us to him.”  
Kamui's eyes widen, and he yells in rage, spreading his arms. Flames shoot from both of his hands.  
But they're small, weak, compared to the inferno that Shin had called to protect him. It barely takes the soldiers a second to immobilise him.  
“Well, that went faster than I expected,” Shinonome says brightly.  
He steps forward. Kouji rushes out of his corner of the ruined room and stands between him and the two people trapped in ice.  
“Wait!”  
“Ibuki.” Kanzaki's voice is both condescending and final. “I won't overlook your obstruction again. Step aside.”  
“These people aren't terrorists!”  
“They are Burnish! Would you wait until they have killed before stopping them? When they set a house aflame, will _you_ go explain to the bereaved family that their loved ones died because you wanted to give their killers a _chance_?”  
Kouji's breath freezes in his chest. He can still smell the burnt wood of the tables, feel the heat radiating from the still smoldering remains. The flames against his cheeks, the burns on his skin, the pain.  
He shakes. Kanzaki steps forward and pushes him aside.  
 _Wait_ , he calls, but the words never leave his throat. He can't say them. He's too weak, has always been weak, and as he stumbles and struggles to keep his footing, his eyes meet Shin's own, grim and knowing. The freeze cuffs are closed around Shin's wrists, the collar around his neck, and he's hauled away.   
And Kouji stands in the middle of the ruined café, too weak, too cowardly to move.  
The soldiers advance on Kamui. Dran tries to shield him, but one of them shoves him aside with his gun, and he crashes into the door. The soldiers pull Kamui up, still frozen and lifeless.  
“Wait!” Kouji finally calls. “Where are you taking them?”  
“That's none of your concern.”  
“They should be interrogated by the police, not treated like terrori—”  
“ _We_ will interrogate them. We will decide if they're terrorists or not. If they really are harmless, then they don't have to worry, do they? But you saw how that one attacked us.”  
 _You were pointing guns at him!_  
Before he can say a word, Kanzaki advances on him and stares him down.  
“Or do you want me to arrest you along with them for getting in our way? Surely _you_ don't have anything to hide, do you? Or are you protecting them on purpose?”  
Kouji swallows. While he stares, the soldiers throw Kamui into their helicopter.  
When the rotors start turning again, the wind carries the scent of smoke.  
Sick with rage and disgust and something else altogether, Kouji turns his back on the remains of the café, walks out, climbs on his motorcycle, and speeds away, the sound of a rising helicopter slowly disappearing behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to update earlier, oops.  
> Anyway, back with Chrono this time!

It takes several hours for the doors to really open again. Chrono had hoped for a chance when they brought food, but it was thrown in through a hole in the door instead, dried biscuits and dried meat and vacuum sealed vegetable paste bars. So Chrono waits, his sense of unease growing.  
He'd expected to be put in an isolated cell. Leaving him not just with Tsuneto, Karl and Kei but with a whole group of other Burnish leaves him with a much better chance of breaking out. But maybe that's precisely what they're expecting. Maybe they only left him with others so he'd discuss his plans with them. The cells are probably bugged.  
But whether they suspect that he's capable of breaking out or not, he can't afford to call it off. What good would it do? All he'd gain from it is letting more of his people die slowly and extinguishing their last shred of hope.  
No. If they're prepared for that eventuality, then he'll just have to _win_.  
The doors finally open. Chrono focuses, and open his eyes.  
A soldier stands in the brightly lit shape of the doorway.  
“You, Mister Leader,” she says. “Out. We're getting you a better cell.” Her smile, when Chrono's eyes adjust, leaves no doubt as to the actual level of comfort he can expect from wherever they're taking him. “You lot too,” she adds, nodding at his subordinates.

They get out, the door closes behind them, and they start walking, flanked by soldiers.  
_It's now or never._ He'll never get another chance this perfect.  
“Tsuneto,” he murmurs. “Karl. Kei.”  
None of them answer, but they all walk just a step closer to him, hanging on to his words. A slight smile slides onto his lips, unbidden, the flames dancing at the prospect of a _fight_. Of burning.  
Chrono breathes, and reaches for them, deep inside himself.  
“It's time to unleash the dragon.”  
He pulls. The flames answer, joyous, _laughing_. A shiver of excitement runs through him, and it isn't his.  
_Burn_ , he tells them, himself. _Burn._  
The flames rush to his arms. The freezing machinery pushes back at them, with cold that makes his fingers seize up, his skin crackle. No matter. He burns again. Gets frozen again. The flow of fire from his heart to his arms gets stronger, faster, laughs louder and louder. The freezing cuffs struggle to keep up, stutter. Collapse.  
Chrono burns through the mechanism, and spreads his arms, and his flames burst from every part of him, crying out for their brethren, crying out for something to _burn_.  
The soldiers around him turn, shout, but it's too late. The fire wraps around them, melts their guns, and with a grip and pull of his fist, the flames become solid and grab them, sending them flying against the wall.  
With his other hand, he sends another trail of flame to destroy his friends' own cuffs.  
“Thanks, Boss,” Tsuneto calls, jumping a little and sending flames at a soldier who just came around the corner, alerted by the noise. “Woohoo! The Mad Burnish are back in the game!”  
“Karl! Tsuneto! You open those cells and get everyone out. I'll cover you. Kei, you get to the front door and _keep it open at all costs_.”  
“Gotcha!” Tsuneto says.  
“Yes,” Kei simply answers.  
“Don't kill anyone unless it's really you or them,” Chrono adds, blocking off the other side of the path with a wall of fire. “I know they're lying about us, but if we kill them _now_ we ruin all the work we've done until now. We want our hands _clean_ when we finally expose him.”  
“Aye aye Boss.”  
The priority, he knows, is not letting Freeze Force take hostages. So he gathers his strength, and pushes the wall of flame forward, tripping and pushing the opposing soldiers towards the end of the corridor.  
_I have to reach the end of the cells…_ He strides forward, pushing with one hand and shooting streams of flame with the other. The alarm rings, and sprinklers come to life in the corridors; he drops his shooting to break them.  
Behind him, the shouts of people hurrying out of their cells and cheering each other on reaches him.  
“Boss!”  
Tsuneto catches up to him.  
“What about—”  
“We got all the cells in the area. Karl's leading them to the exit.”  
“Good. I'm gonna push through. Open cells as soon as you reach them. I want to make sure we're not leaving anyone behind.”  
“Got it.”  
Icy projectiles shoot through his wall, crashing against his shoulder. With a snarl, he brings both his hands up, gathering an inferno on his palms, and sends a giant fireball roaring through the entire corridor, burning from floor to ceiling.  
_Everything except flesh_ , he commands it. _Everything except flesh. Burn. BURN._  
The fire sends the soldiers flying, burns through their weapons, their clothes. Screams of fear ring in the corridor.  
_I won't let you hurt them. I won't let you hurt them again._  
He runs forward. Behind him, Tsuneto opens what seems to be the last cell.  
“Come on, people, out! We're taking a nice warm vacation! Hurry, hurry!”  
From the other side of Chrono's flames, a deep rumbling shakes the walls.  
_Oh come on, what now_.  
The walls shake again, like an impact hitting them. Just before it comes crashing into his corridor, Chrono recognises the telltale sound of an engine.  
_Here!?_  
Behind him, someone screams. He braces himself. One chance. One chance to not be beaten at his own bowling game.  
Right as the armoured vehicle rushes towards him and the people behind him, he pushes up with flames under its front wheels, ducks underneath, and pushes _up_ , with all his strength and fire, and pierces through.  
It crashes on its back, smoking. Chrono sends another fireball behind it, then turns and runs, picking up one of the smaller children as he goes.  
“Come on! Hurry!”  
They run. Turn the corridor. Towards the front door, half-torn, open just enough to squeeze through.  
Behind them, something blows up. Chrono prays that they had the sense to get out before it did.  
“Boss!”  
Karl runs back towards him. Over on the landing strip, Kei's helping people up into an aircraft.  
“Do we fit?”  
“Barely. There's this plane but no one knows how to fly it…”  
“It's fine. Just get into the other ones. I'll take care of the rest.”  
Tsuneto catches up with him, and takes the curled up child from his arms.  
“So where are we going?”  
“We're probably too heavy to reach the trucks. Let's meet up at the cave. I'm sure they've put trackers on their helicopters anyway.”  
But at least, he can take them all to safety. Leading a secondary charge with the most able adults to find boats was a possibility, but one that he really wasn't looking forward to. The chance for casualties was just too high.  
“Okay. I'll take off as soon as we're boarded.”  
He runs forward, the few last stragglers with him.  
Chrono turns back towards the door.  
_Let's see how you like your own prison._  
Reaching into his core again, he calls on to more flames, and slams them repeatedly against the torn part of the door, pushing it almost closed.  
Behind him, the helicopters take off.  
_Time to go._  
With a last burst of flames, he blows up the remaining plane. And then he pushes up, into the sky, following the trail left by his friends.  
To freedom.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE IT IS. THE SCENE.
> 
> Warning for some implied suicidal thoughts in this chapter.

When he finally reaches the lake, Kouji stands, still winded with anger and frustration, and stares at its vast stretch of ice, at the stars above.  
Slowly, slowly, the bitter rage in him melts, disappears. And with it, the strength that had been holding him up.  
Sighing, he lets himself collapse, sitting in the snow.  
Why was he so angry in the first place? It's not like he fully disagrees with Kanzaki. These were people he knew, and he knows he's biased, but no matter how nice they might be, who knows when their power might have gone haywire. Even if they don't _mean_ to hurt anyone, it doesn't make them any less dangerous.  
And yet…  
Yet, he knows it's unfair. And maybe that's why he's so angry, in the end. Not because Freeze Force took away two Burnish that he'd almost considered his friends, but because they showed him what his actual prejudice actually looks like. What it actually leads to.  
Maybe the one he's the most angry at is himself.

He sighs, leaning back into the snow, but just as he does, something catches his attention. A slight movement in one of the bags saddled to his motorbike.  
In a second, he's back to his knees, then on his feet, crouched and approaching the bike cautiously.  
Dran's face pops out of the bag.  
Kouji sighs, and almost lets himself drop back into the snow.  
“It's you… you gave me a fright.”  
At his voice, Dran smiles, and hops from the bag to his chest, wrapping around his shoulders.  
“Why did you follow me… nevermind, it's probably for the best.”  
If he'd actually left him alone back there, the team would have had his head. Dran isn't just a mascot, to them. He's a friend, and a useful member of the team to boot.  
As he stands again, Dran lifts his head, looking at the lake questioningly.  
“… I come here sometimes,” Kouji explains. “When things get too hard. It helps.”  
Dran leans his head against his. From anyone else, it might have felt like pity. But not from Dran. And with the contact, Kouji feels an old craving well up in him again.  
A wish to be held. Like he was when he was little. Like he hasn't been in so many years.  
He shakes his head. He can't let himself get even weaker, especially not right now.  
“… here,” he says. “Let me show you something fun.”

Skating with Dran is more fun than he would have expected. The small dragonoid, used to rolling around on rollerskates, takes to ice like a fish to water, only put off by the cold when he first sets his bare feet on it. And with his tail, he can do so much that even Kouji, with his experience, could only dream of pulling off. Challenging each other to copy the other's figures warms them up, enough that Kouji finds his rotten mood dissipating and starts having fun instead, and they'd started racing each other across the ice when a trail of pink fire in the sky makes him stop in his tracks, Dran almost colliding with his legs and swerving in extremis.  
Dran huffs at him, coming back to glare at him, but when he sees where Kouji's staring, he climbs up his body to hop on his shoulders instead.  
“Look,” Kouji says, pointing.  
It's Burnish fire, all right. Like a shooting star, falling through the sky and towards the forest below.  
Dran grips his shoulders.  
“… Dran. Can I trust you with something?”

He leaves Dran on the edge of the lake, with his emergency heater, his radio, and his SOS signal running. It would take reinforcements about an hour to get there, he thinks. Until then, he needs to find out what's going on, and keep himself safe.  
As silent as he can, he hides behind a drift pile of snow, and spies on the entrance to the cave that seems to coincide with the Burnish's landing trajectory.  
He waits. For a few silent minutes, nothing moves except the occasional gust of wind brushing snow off the trees. And then, just as he's starting to doubt, a heat signature emerges from the depths of the cave.  
No, two. Two _small_ heat signatures, but still brighter than any human.  
They come closer. As they approach the exit, Kouji removes the filter from his binoculars, and sees the Burnish themselves, hesitantly looking out.  
Children.   
One of them is covered in bandages. The other, a little shorter, is helping her walk, and Kouji notices with a jolt the empty gap where her foot should be.  
When he'd been pulled out of that first fire, Kouji's burned limb had been saved by Ryuzu's colleagues. It had taken a lot of physical therapy, but by the time he hit ten, he could walk well enough again that no one could have guessed that he had ever been wounded, much less that the medics had almost given up on saving the limb without amputating it. The only trace of it that remained, and has remained into adulthood, is the scar that stretches across his leg and pulls with careless movements sometimes.  
This child has been less lucky than him.  
Suddenly, both of them turn their heads, as if hearing something coming from deep inside the cave. The little boy helps his friend turn, and they walk back inside.

A few minutes later, Kouji walks into the cave.  
He feels uneasy, and not just from the danger. Something feels _wrong_ , and he doesn't quite know what. It's a feeling crawling along his back like muddy, melting ice water.   
But walking away feels worse.   
He crouches, freeze gun at the ready, and flits from rock to rock, hiding his way to the depths of the cave. A faint glow starts to appear, the pink of Burnish fire mixing with reds and orange of natural flame. Kouji walks even slower, keeping himself glued to the wall.  
A buzz of conversation, hushed and nervous and tired. And then shadows on the wall, against the red glow. Just around the corner…   
He crouches again, and looks past the angle of rock shielding him. Figures are sitting around the fire, huddled in blankets. The familiar smell of over-salty canned food reaches him, just as one of the figures turns around, and sees him.  
He freezes. The Burnish—a child, and his heart skips a beat as he recognises the girl he'd seen earlier—gasps, her blanket falling down her shoulders.  
It doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense.  
They're still staring at each other when he senses someone behind him. But it's already too late: when he tries to turn, his arm is caught, twisted back; he tries to cry out, and his voice is muffled by a mask being pressed to his face.  
The gun drops. The lights fade.

When Kouji wakes up, his arms and feet have been restrained. He's resting against the wall of the cave, and not dead, surprisingly, and for some reason a threadbare blanket like those he's seen on the Burnish by the fire is wrapped around his shoulders, protecting him somewhat from the chill of the cold stone.  
He shifts, pulls on his arms. The ropes aren't cutting off his bloodflow that he can feel, but they're still extremely tight, and wrapped to follow the curve of his arms. He's not going to get out of it without help.  
“Did you call for reinforcements?”  
He looks up. Sitting on a rock a few meters away from him, and looking more tired than magestic, is the Burnish boy with the flame hair. The leader who so effortlessly pushed Kouji to his limits just two days before.  
He stares at him, tense, wishing he at least still had his gun with him. But what good would it even do against this monstrously powerful Burnish? Even with a gun, he wouldn't stand a chance. All he could do was maybe take down a few smaller targets.  
… a few children.  
He feels sick.  
The Burnish stands and sighs.  
“I'm not asking just for myself. We're going to leave soon. If no one knows where you are, I'd rather not leave you here to die from cold and hunger.”  
“Why do you care?”  
“I told you, didn't I? We don't kill, not on purpose, not without reason. Otherwise, don't you think I'd already have done it?”  
 _Does it really matter if it's on purpose_ , a lost, hurt part of him asks. But it's true that he's still alive, and that the Burnish leader has had him at his complete mercy twice already.  
“Chrono!”  
They both turn. The little girl with the missing leg and her friend are coming towards them. Immediately, the leader—Chrono, apparently—walks up to them and crouches next to them, putting his face at her level.  
“What's wrong?”  
“A-are they gonna find us? Karl—Karl said he's the guy who caught you… are they gonna come back for us?”  
Chrono pets her head.  
“It's okay. Tsuneto and Kei went to get us trucks. Even if they're coming, we'll be out of here before they find us.”  
“But…”  
She bites her lip. Carefully, Chrono puts one of his knees down to the ground, and wraps his arms around her and her friend.  
The girl's breath hitches. She draws in a hoarse breath, then two, and then breaks into sobs, pressing her face to Chrono's shoulder.  
“I don't want to go back… I don't want to go back! If they come for us, I'll—”  
“Holly.”  
His firm voice shakes the almost hysterical edge that had crept into her tears. He brings his hand up to the back of her head, keeps her pressed to him.  
“I won't let it happen. I promise.”  
“But Freeze Force…” the boy says, hesitant. “… they already caught you.”  
Slowly, Chrono pulls back, keeping a hand on each of their shoulders.  
“Can I tell you two a secret?”  
They nod, silently.  
“You saw how I got out of those handcuffs easily, right? Why d'you think I kept them on until I was in the cell with you guys?”  
They frown, but suddenly, the girl's eyes widen in shock and understanding. Chrono smiles.  
“That's right. I let them catch me on purpose. That's the reason we attacked Promepolis in the first place. So we'd be _sure_ Myoujin would send us to the same place. And if I hadn't held back and let them catch me, they wouldn't have stood a chance. Isn't that right?” he asks, turning towards Kouji with a half smile.  
Kouji holds back the urge to snap at him. But he's right. And now that he's said it, all the details that didn't quite add up suddenly _do_ , like how long he'd kept Kouji suspended, talking to him instead of getting rid of him. He'd been _stalling_. Waiting for the rest of the team to show up, the entire time.  
He feels like a complete fool.  
The children are staring at him.  
“… he's right,” he sighs, because no matter his feelings about Burnish, making children cry feels wrong. “He was toying with me the entire time.”  
“See,” Chrono says with a smile. “If his friends or Freeze Force show up before we get out, I'll protect you. I swear. I won't let them take any of you again.”  
Slowly, the children nod. Chrono wipes away the little girl's tears with a corner of her blanket.  
“Now, did you have anything to eat yet?”  
“No…”  
“You have to eat to heal. We have a long drive ahead, so you need as much strength as you can get, okay?”  
“… okay.”

“… I left a sos signal across the lake,” Kouji says quietly once the children are out of hearing range.  
Chrono turns towards him, eyes sharp, piercing, but not accusing.  
“How long was I out?” Kouji asks.  
“About five minutes.”  
“Then I'd say you have half an hour. Fourty minutes at most.”  
Chrono tenses, but then shakes his head.  
“I expected as much. We'll make it work.” He sighs, then, and turns to face Kouji more squarely. “What's your name?”  
“… Kouji Ibuki.”  
“Thank you, Kouji Ibuki.”  
“Is that a code name? 'Chrono'?”  
He shakes his head.  
“It's my name. Just Chrono.”  
The way he says it shuts down further discussion firmly enough that even Kouji feels it.  
“… that kid. What happened to her? I thought fire didn't burn the Burnish.”  
A bitter smile comes to Chrono's lips.  
“It does. We just heal. Until we can't.” He takes a breath, and despite his small body, he feels incredibly old. “She was torn apart by Myoujin's experiments. All the people here were. That's why he's been rounding us up.”  
“What?!”  
“… you really didn't know?”  
“What are you talking about? Ryuzu would never—”  
“'Ryuzu', huh. Sounds like you're close.”  
“He saved me.”  
“Did he? You were lucky then.”  
A biting reply comes to Kouji's lips, but before he can say it, someone else shouts from the group huddled around the fire.  
“Takeru!”  
“Chrono! Chrono!”  
Chrono turns, and hurries towards the commotion. People part as he walks, letting him come close.  
A man lies on the ground, in front of the fire.  
“He just collapsed!” A boy with ear-length hair that Kouji recognises as one of Chrono's Mad Burnish sidekicks says, panicked. “He looked fine until a minute ago.”  
“You idiot,” Chrono growls, kneeling next to him. “You were hiding it, weren't you?”  
“Ha… haha… busted, huh?”  
“Why didn't you tell us?”  
“You don't have… time to worry about me right now…”  
“What about your brother? You have to get back to him, remember?!”  
The man looks to the side, towards the exit of the cave and Kouji himself. His outstretched hand, under Kouji's eyes, starts crumbling into dust, or ashes. He looks at it with a sad, resigned smile.  
“… he's probably better off this way.”  
Chrono grits his teeth.  
Kouji's throat tightens.  
“… I have a first aid kit in my bike,” he calls out, on impulse. “If you get it, you can still—”  
“That won't do him any good.”  
It knocks the air out of his lungs. The man looks at him with what might have been meant as a chuckle but only comes out as a raspy, broken sigh.  
“You're not… that bad…”  
His eyes close.  
“Takeru!”  
Chrono grabs Takeru's hand, squeezes it with both of his.  
“Takeru, come on, don't you dare give up _now_ …”  
But Takeru doesn't open his eyes again. He's barely breathing.  
With a bit of a snarl, Chrono bends down, and presses his lips to his.  
 _What good does it do if you don't tilt his head?_ Kouji's brain tells him, but rather than blowing into his airways, what comes from Chrono's mouth is light. Faintly pink and iridescent, like his flames, it passes through his lips, casting a faint glow on their faces through their skin, and then down, sinking into Takeru's unconscious form, and all of him starts to glow, to pulse. Like a Burnish awakening.  
Chrono comes up for breath. A gasp, and he bends down again, breathes more light, more fire into him. But when he comes up again, it's fear and pain that are written on his face.  
He tries again.  
The light pulses, soft, and goes out.

In the fire-lit cave, the only noise breaking the silence is the crackling of the flames.  
Slowly, Chrono straightens, and sits back, his face grim and hard. Kouji can barely breathe.  
“… Chrono?”  
Chrono looks up. A girl with pink hair walks out of the crowd, another girl a step behind her.  
As his face catches the light again, Kouji notices that he's crying.  
“Um,” the girl says, “Am and I can… sing the prayer…”  
“… please.” His voice is quiet. “Right now, I… I don't think I…”  
She nods, a small smile on her lips.  
“Leave it to us.”  
The crowd parts further. The two girls stand on each side of Takeru's body, one near his head and one near his feet, spread their hands, and sing.  
It's a simple prayer, about ashes in the wind and freedom from pain and coming to rest in the earth, finally. Their voices are light but firm, filling the cave, dancing with the glow of the flames. Silently, as the song picks up, Chrono takes Takeru's half-crumbled arms, and rests them on his chest.  
Little by little, his entire body turns to ash.  
The girls sing, the fire burns, and Chrono kneels, silent, at the side of a man whose body has finally been consumed.

“Boss! The trucks are ready to go!”  
A handful of minutes later, the remaining Mad Burnish come back into the cave, from a different direction. Chrono runs his fingertips through the lingering layer of ash, and stands.  
“Get everyone on board. Start with the kids and those who can't walk. I'll keep watch until you're done.”  
“Yessir!”  
“We're short on time, so make it quick.” He forces a smile to his face, and the black haired man beams. “I'm counting on you.”  
“Yes, Boss! Okay, kids,” he calls out, turning back towards the crowd, “form a line and hold hands, and follow me! We're going on a road trip!”  
Slowly but steadily, the crowd organises itself and moves towards the depths. The fire is smothered. Chrono, alone, walks past Kouji, and sits between him and the entrance to the cave.  
Kouji stays silent. He can't shake the image of the man's grey face being blown apart by the faintest gust of warm air, of his ashes flying away with the wind.  
“… you sound like you want to say something,” Chrono says, his back still turned.  
They're alone, and the world is growing dark.  
“… ashes?”  
“I told you, didn't I? We burn, and we heal, until we can't. The flames are keeping us alive. We want to live, and they want to burn. So we burn for them, and they give us life.” Somehow, despite the pain, his voice feels warm, almost tender. “… I've always wondered. Can you really not hear them?”  
“… hear who?”  
“The flames. People say they didn't hear them before, but they're so _loud_. Always talking. Crying.”  
The only sound Kouji has ever heard from flames is crackling. And, sometimes, screams.  
“… no.” He sighs. “If they're keeping you alive, why…”  
“Our bodies can only take so much strain. If we burn too hard, we consume ourselves. Like that girl you saw. Or Takeru. And when we die…” His voice grows more quiet. “When we die, we return the gift they gave us, and burn one last time.”  
There's so much gentleness in his rough voice, and an adult kind of resignation mixed with his determination. It's hard to imagine that this is the same man who looked down on him back on the roof of a Promepolis lab.  
But then again, maybe that had all been an act. Maybe he'd just made himself who his enemies wanted him to be.  
“… why are you still talking to me?”  
A pause. In the distance, the voices of the other Burnish are growing faint, and the light from their lamps has completely faded away.  
“… you're close to Myoujin, aren't you? What would it take to break into his lab?”  
Kouji's eyes widen.  
“You want me to _help you attack him_?”  
“Just sneaking in could be enough. I don't know who could still be in there; I know this isn't everyone who got captured, but how do we know if the others are even still alive? If he's still got them, I can't just leave them there. And if we reveal what he's doing to the world…” He turns to face Kouji, and his face is torn between disillusionment and a desperate attempt to hold on to hope. “… I doubt it'd make people accept us. Maybe a lot of them would still support him. But if it at least stops him in his tracks…”  
He looks right at him, and Kouji realises with a jolt of shocking certainty that what Chrono is offering him is trust. Somehow, this man who should be his enemy, who feels like he holds the weight of the world on his shoulders, is ready to trust him and give him a chance.  
It twists at his heart. But at the same time, all he can see is Ryuzu, smiling at him as he cries, telling him that it'll be okay, that everything will be better, that one day the world will be beautiful again.  
His breath hitches.  
“… I _can't_.”  
The light in Chrono's eyes dims.  
“… I thought so.”  
In the distance, someone calls. _Boss!_ Chrono turns, faces the depths of the cave again.  
“Suit yourself. But if you care about the truth, you shouldn't wait too long to look for it. It'd weigh on your firefighter's conscience if you let people burn to death, right?”  
And before Kouji can answer, he calls fire to his hands again, pushes himself up from the ground, and shoots towards the other end of the cave.

Twenty minutes later, Dran, Tokoha and Ryuutarou rush in, making a beeline for him as soon as they see him.  
The gust of wind they bring scatters the last of the ashes.

“They left a long time ago,” Kouji says. “I don't know where they went.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter this time... but we are meeting more people and also kicking off some of the PLOT >:3

They reach the shelter some time in the early morning.  
With the sun barely out, the usual activity hasn't yet swept through the small settlement; the only ones awake to see their arrival are the very early, those on watch duty, and one who's been anxiously waiting for them all to come back since days ago when the small rescue unit left.  
She stands on the rocky ground now, as the trucks drive under the shelter of the main building, hidden from sight.  
“Chrono!”  
Chrono's heart lightens a little. Hopping down from his seat in the truck, he walks towards the closest he's ever had to a parent figure.  
“Mikuru… has everything been fine while we were gone?”  
To his surprise, she crosses the last of the distance and gives him a hug.  
“What, did you think I wouldn't watch over them? Everyone's fine. What about _you_? Looks like you brought a lot of people back this time.”  
The reminder dampens the warmth of his moment a little. For a short moment, he presses his head against her shoulder, letting go of the pain he's held at bay during the entire trip so he could _function_ , mourns those he lost, or couldn't reach on time.  
And then he straightens, breathing in, squaring his shoulders, looking her straight in the eye.  
“Myoujin held more than I thought. He's been actively rounding up civilians, as we suspected. And… the other part is true too.” Her face hardens, and he sighs. “There's more children than I expected. Can you help me get them set up? I'll look after them for now, but if any other adults or families want to take them in, it'd probably be for the best. Those who've been Burnish for several years can probably take care of themselves, but…”  
Behind him, Tsuneto and team start helping people out of the trucks. Most of them look barely awake, and still exhausted from the trip—and everything they lived through before them. From the metal stairs leading down from the settlement, several adults arrive, taking over from them, leading people to a less windy area.  
“I already prepared beds, and individual living spaces. We'll get them organised. More importantly, Chrono,” she says, hands on her hips, “when's the last time _you_ 've slept?”  
“I…”  
She stares him down.  
“… I dozed off a bit in the helicopter,” he mumbles.  
It had been a shitty ride. His hands had been caught in those awful freeze cuffs, and he hadn't allowed himself more than ten minutes of sleep, so he wouldn't miss where they were going, but it was something.  
It was, also, two days ago.  
She sighs.  
“Chrono, you can't protect anyone if you stretch yourself thin like this.”  
“I know. I know, I just…” He sighs. “Listen. I want to get them set up at least. I can't just leave them and have them guided by strangers and dropped on strange beds without an explanation.”  
“We can give that explanation.”  
He shakes his head.  
“It's not the same. I… I personally told them I'd get them to safety. I have to see them there. Myself. Especially the little ones. Some of them are young _and_ only recently awakened, I can't just…”  
He trails off, and she sighs and hugs him again.  
“Get the little ones settled in. And then, you're eating the meal I'm making you and _going to bed_. The adults will understand. Trust me, they'll feel safer knowing their fearless leader and strongest line of defense isn't half dead on his feet.”  
“I… fine. You've got a point.” Again, he allows himself the weakness of leaning on her for a few seconds, and then straightens again. “Let's go help, then.”

They gather the children while more people come down from the building, bearing blankets and a carrying chair. From a hole in the ceiling, a stretcher secured by cables slowly comes down. As the adults start talking to the new arrivals, seemingly grateful for some guidance and company, Chrono takes a head count.  
Eleven. Eleven kids, two of which he knows are in reality over twenty. It's more than he'd ever expected to find in Myoujin's little prison laboratory.  
If only he'd had the time to explore, infiltrate the facility. But getting them out and to safety was the priority.  
He puts a smile on his face.  
“Okay, we're there. We got you some beds ready in the same space as me and Mikuru here, so I'll be right there if you need me. Let's all get some sleep, and we can sort things out better once we've rested, okay?”  
Most of them nod. A little boy starts sniffing. Chrono puts one knee down to get down to his level.  
“What's wrong?”  
“… how will my mom and dad find me? They… they don't know where I've gone… I want to talk to them…”  
Chrono's heart tightens. But he can't let himself look weak in front of them. They need to be able to trust someone. To feel safe.  
Carefully, he offers the boy a hug. He takes it, but stays tense in his arms.  
“Listen… right now, we can't let anyone know where we are. But if the prison break gets on the news, maybe they'll know you've escaped.”  
“… mmm…”  
He doesn't sound too convinced. Chrono pulls back and smiles, as best as he can.  
“And besides, I'm working to expose everything Myoujin's doing. Once we do that… once they stop sending Freeze Force after us, I'll make sure to contact your parents. So you can go back to them and be safe. Okay?”  
The boy nods.  
“Okay…”  
Chrono squeezes his shoulder, and gets to his feet again. A wave of dizziness hits him.  
 _Urgh… okay yeah, I do need to sleep._  
“All right. Let's all get upstairs and rest. We have food too. Kei,” he calls, towards the trio who's now laughing with some of their friends, lightening the gathering's mood. “I need some strong arms over here, wanna help?”

“… he's lucky,” Holly says quietly from Kei's arms as they climb up to the settlement.  
Chrono looks up at her. There's no real bitterness on her face this time, but still a lot of sadness and exhaustion.  
“He still has his parents,” she explains.  
“… I know.”

“Tokoha.”  
Tokoha looks up from her magazine, and raises an eyebrow at him.   
It's been at least twelve hours since they brought him back. Kouji can't see the clock from where he is, but what he can see is the sun high in the sky, throwing its rays into the common room.  
He sits, holding back a wince.  
“Should you even be up,” Tokoha sighs at him.  
“I'm fine.”  
“You bruised several ribs, remember. And got yourself tied up by some wanted terrorists, too. It's almost like you're looking for it.”  
“Do you know the details of your brother's research?”  
She blinks.  
“Huh? Where did _that_ come from?”  
He looks away.  
“I heard some… disturbing rumours.”  
“… what's that supposed to mean?” Her voice is sharp, offended. “Kouji!”  
Kouji looks at her and sighs.   
“I'm sorry. I don't know what to think.”  
“My brother would _never_ take part in anything unsavoury.”  
“That was my impression too.”  
He's only met Mamoru Anjou a few times, but the man always struck him as a kind person, if surprisingly firm and sharp at times. All in all, not too different from his sister in that sense, although maybe with better self-control and people skills.  
The idea that he would knowingly participate in dangerous experiments on humans is ridiculous.  
And yet.  
“… I think you're still in shock,” Tokoha says. “You went through a lot. Get some rest, okay?”  
“… I'll try.”  
Something in his chest hurts, and it isn't his ribs.

When he wakes up again, several hours later, Tokoha's gone, her break finally there. Chris, as usual, is back on his computer, oblivious to the darkening sky outside.  
“Oh, you're up. Your phone buzzed earlier.”  
Kouji picks it out of his jacket.  
His inbox displays Ryuzu Myoujin's name.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, this is where things get _real_.
> 
> I already warned for it in the first chapter, but this chapter in particular is heavy on the in-character victim blaming and suicidal rhetoric, so please be aware of it.  
> (Of course, you know it's bullshit because Ryuzu is the one saying it, but... you know. Stay safe <3 )
> 
> The POV will change but it should be obvious enough which is which

“I'm glad to see that you're unharmed,” Ryuzu says as Kouji walks into his office the next morning. “I heard you were kidnapped by terrorists. I was very worried when I heard the news.”  
“I'm fine,” Kouji says, trying his best not to show his nervousness, his doubt. “They only restrained me. The medication helped with my ribs, I should be able to get back to work soon.”  
“That's a relief.” He smiles, and weaves the fingers of his hands together. “I will be direct. You came into contact with the leader of the Mad Burnish, did you not?”  
Kouji gasps, and Ryuzu smiles.  
“I expected as much. I received word this morning that he has escaped, and I doubt any of the gang's small fry could take you on that easily, even with your injuries.”  
“… you flatter me, Sir.” He tries to keep his tone even. “If you know he escaped why hasn't it been on the news?”  
Ryuzu smiles.  
“Now, now, didn't I tell you that you could use my name? You've grown too fast, Kouji.” He stands, looks outside his window. “I haven't told the press, because the situation is under control. Try as he might, his struggling will only tighten the net around him. Besides, I wouldn't want to cause a panic. Or tarnish your reputation.”  
Kouji stays silent. Tokoha's words still ring in his ears. _My brother would never take part in anything unsavoury._  
But the more time passes, the more he gets the feeling that the missing keyword might be _knowingly_.  
“I'm not worried about the Mad Burnish's leader escaping,” Ryuzu says, “but I _am_ worried about what seeds he might have planted in you.” He turns. His voice is still soft, but his eyes feel like ice. “The Mad Burnish have long been a thorn in my side. Despite all their meddling and sabotaging, I've brought this city to where it is now, protected its citizen, helped mankind grow again and flourish. I've worked to secure a future for humanity. And now, at the most critical moment, they're attempting a desperate ploy to shake the people's confidence in me. Terrorism. Slander. They want people to lose faith.” He smiles then, softer, kind, almost pitying, while Kouji's brain desperately tries to catch up, to piece together the words and the truth and _what does he mean, critical moment???_ , and says: “What did he tell you, Kouji?”  
It's the same look Ryuzu has given him for years, every time he came close to collapsing. The look he gave him in those first few days at the hospital when he woke in screams with the choked dying voices of his parents in his ears. The look he gave him when he was ready to give up on ever walking again, telling him to _have faith_ , Ryuzu knew he could do it. The look he gave him when he told him he'd recommend him for Burning Rescue.  
The single thing that's held him together for so many years, when he was alone.  
“Have you really been experimenting on the Burnish?” his mouth says, obeying Ryuzu's eyes, before his mind can think to hold him back.  
Ryuzu's smile stretches.  
“Just as I thought.”  
He walks forward, slowly, and Kouji stays frozen.  
“That child is in denial.”  
Just one step away.  
“I am about to bring salvation to humans and Burnish both. But that child is deluding himself and trying to stop me.”  
Ryuzu's hand, the prosthetic one, comes to rest on his shoulder.  
“Do you want to know the truth, Kouji? The full truth?” Kouji swallows, and can't tear his eyes away. “Follow me, I'll explain everything.”

“It's nice that we get a chance to have dinner together for once,” Mamoru says as he brings bowls to the table. “I've been so busy that sometimes I forget I haven't eaten until it's been almost a day.”  
Tokoha huffs. It's not as easy as it should be, but being with Mamoru always brings out the old her, the little girl who was carefree enough to worry more about the potential presence of fishcake in her next meal than about whether that meal would come at all.  
“Mom would get mad. That's why she always insisted we have dinner as a family. Even back then, you were always too engrossed in what you were doing. If we hadn't been there, you'd have starved.”  
He laughs.  
“Now, now, I _do_ keep food on hand. But it's true that I'd rather have a real dinner with you.”  
“… it's what she'd have wanted.”  
“… yes.” He smiles, and straightens, trying to lighten the mood. “But from what I've heard, you've been busy yourself. I heard your squad made a lot of waves. Catching terrorists? That wasn't in the job description.”  
“I mean, there was a fire, so we went, and they were there. What we were supposed to do, ask them to move aside so we can throw water at the fire they started?”  
He chuckles again.  
“You have a point.”  
“And then Kouji goes and tries to fight the leader on his own… I love him and all, but I wish he wasn't so idiotically brave sometimes.”  
“He's the newcomer who joined last year, right? You two seem close.”  
He winks at her. She rolls her eyes.  
“It's not like that. I just…”  
The broth in her pot is boiling. She stares at it, not quite able to make herself move and drop in the meat yet.  
“… he's my friend and I care about him. I don't want to lose anyone else. It's been a long time since we've had a casualties in the squad, but…”  
Mamoru softens. He reaches for her hand where it still holds the pack of sliced meat, rests his own on it.  
“Tokoha… if your unit is doing so well, it's because you've done a great job of protecting them.”  
She laughs, tearfully, and straightens, dropping the slices of meat into the pot.  
“I don't know about that. I feel pretty useless a lot of the time.”  
“The data doesn't lie, Tokoha. You've had the highest ratio of success and the lowest amount of casualties for years. And now you took on a group of seasoned terrorists. Your squad is strong, and it's partly because of you.”  
She splutters.  
“Y-you've been keeping tabs?”  
“Can't I check how my little sister is faring? I have so little time to actually spend with you.”  
“You and your _data_.” She huffs, sorts the other ingredients, arranges them carefully in the pot, and sits. Hunger's pulling at her stomach, but it's something else that makes it tighten and cramp. “… hey, Mamoru…”  
“Hm?”  
“What… what _do_ you work on exactly?”  
“Well, space physics, but… you know I'm not allowed to say more, Tokoha.”  
“I know. I _know_ , but…”  
“… is something troubling you?”  
She bites her lip. It feels _terrible_ , to doubt her brother, when he's always been there for her, when he's all she has left aside from her life with Burning Rescue.  
But if he's caught up in anything dangerous…  
“… it's Kouji. He said he heard… worrying things. About the research that's being done at the lab.”  
Mamoru stares at her. She glares at the pot as if it could give her all the answers.  
Finally, Mamoru sighs, and sits too.  
“If it's making you this worried, I'll explain. But please understand: you can't talk to _anyone_ about this. Including your friend. I'm telling you for your peace of mind, and for that only. If any of it leaks, we risk widespread panic, and the project's failure.”  
“… it's that dangerous?”  
“Not quite. I think the appropriate word would probably be… 'controversial'.”

The elevator dives into the depths of the Myoujin Foundation's main building.  
“You know of the siesmic and volcanic activity that came with the Great Fire, don't you?”  
“Volcanoes that had until then been dormant re-awakened,” Kouji answers, almost reciting the lesson he's been taught every year in school. _Do not forget_ , was the word. “The increased activity of the Earth's core and mantle caused plates to shift faster and triggered earthquakes. The eruptions continued until the Burnish population was finally brought under control.”  
“That's right. You've always been a diligent student, Kouji.”  
Kouji ignores the comment, and instead stares at the structures around him. Since when have all these been here? How deep do the Foundation's roots go?  
“The truth, however,” Ryuzu says, “is more complex.”  
The elevator stops. He extends his good hand, presses it to a first panel. It lights up at his touch. A ray of light scans his retina. A door opens.  
The room they enter is full of monitors and holograms. A scale reproduction of the Earth takes up the center of the room, a quarter of it sliced off to bare its insides.  
Kouji freezes. He's studied the Earth's layout in school year after year, could still label one of those diagrams in seconds. But the Earth in front of him is nothing like the diagrams he learned and reproduced for ten years.  
If the hologram in front of him really shows the planet as it is, then something is very, very wrong.  
“What… what is this?”  
“I see you've noticed the problem.”  
“But… how can the core be so… and the mantle… the pressure must be _intense_.”  
“It is. The flames of the Burnish are feeding it.”  
Kouji turns, sharply, alert. Ryuzu's smile is cold.  
“When we got the Burnish population under control, the massive amount of eruptions went back down. But their flames haven't disappeared. They wait in the Earth's core, and heat it ever hotter. The heat spreads through layer after layer. And once the final layer comes under too much pressure?”  
“… it wouldn't be just eruptions,” Kouji murmurs, horrified.  
“Exactly. In a best case scenario, the outmost layers will crack. Burning gas and ash will fill the atmosphere, and what land hasn't shattered will be covered in magma. In a worst case scenario… the planet will simply explode. It depends what gives first. But either way, humanity is doomed.”  
He can't breathe. He can't _think_. Ryuzu's smile is calm and soft, and it makes him feel sick.  
“The Burnish are destroying the world, Kouji. And even when they die, their flames don't.”  
_We want to live, and they want to burn. So we burn for them, and they give us life._  
“But don't worry. Although the Burnish are the ones who brought this world to ruin, it is them who will save humanity from its plight.”

“We've been working to harness the power of the Burnish.”  
Tokoha's glass freezes halfway to her lips.  
“ _What?_ ”  
“You can see why I'm not supposed to talk about it.”  
“But… why?”  
“You know how much the Earth was damaged thirty years ago. Right now, it can sustain its current population, but only because it was drastically reduced. But if humanity grows again, as we're starting to… we'll run into issues. But about fifteen years ago, Professor Myoujin discovered that Burnish flames can affect the fabric of space.”  
“… he wants to go to space?”  
“With the warp engine that I've been devellopping, traveling across the galaxy is no longer just a daydream. We could find new planets to live on. We've even found one suitable for human life already. Once the engine is perfected, we could start spreading.”  
“So what, we just… leave Earth behind?”  
“We don't have to. But for some, it can be a fresh start, far from the horrors of what happened thirty years ago. And if something else ever happens, it means we have an escape route.”  
“… when you put it like that. You think it's gonna happen?”  
His face darkens a little.  
“The geology department are keeping an eye on it, but… I do think the Earth seems to be more active than it used to be. I wasn't born at the time, of course, but we have records. So it's not… outside the realm of possibility.”  
She nods, a little numb.  
Leaving the Earth behind? It feels crazy. The world as it is might be scarred, but it's the world in which she was born.  
And more importantly…  
“How do you even _get_ Burnish fire?”  
“We have a few Burnish volunteers who've been helping us charge the generators for the experiments. We're keeping it a secret because public opinion would turn against us if people knew we're cooperating with Burnish. But once the result of these experiments are published, once we can show people how _useful_ that energy can be, I think we could turn their opinion around. Make them see that Burnish can be normal, productive members of society.” He smiles. “Instead of being reviled as an aberration, we can make people see that this is just a step in humanity's progress. That it'll lead us all to better lives.”  
“Have you actually met any of them?”  
“One of them, once. A girl about your age, actually. I haven't interacted with the others, they work in a different area of the facility. The power they release can interfere with our measuring equipment if they're too close. Why?”  
“… I dunno. It just feels strange. If he's trying to cooperate with Burnish, then why's Myoujin arresting civilians?”  
Mamoru blinks.  
“Civilians? What do you mean?”  
“Freeze Force's been doing a lot of raids recently. They're supposed to be an anti-terrorist unit, but they've been arresting people who didn't do anything, just for being Burnish. People who were just leading normal lives.”  
“Maybe they were undercover informers for the Mad Burnish? The whole Foundation has been on edge recently, with all those attacks.”  
“… maybe.” She sighs, then slams her hands down on the table. “Whatever. I can't think properly on an empty stomach. Let's eat, that meat should be done soon.”  
Mamoru laughs.

“This,” Ryuzu says, gesturing towards the smooth panels sinking deep under the earth, under the feet of Promepolis, “is Parnassus. Humanity's new Ark.”  
“You want to leave Earth behind?” Kouji asks, but his mind is already reeling at the word _Ark_. “Why not direct your resources to saving it instead?”  
The original Ark did not carry much.  
“The Earth is doomed, Kouji. It was rotten even before the Burnish came into existence. Humanity has been killing itself and the planet slowly for decades. Centuries.”  
“What?”  
“Humans are corrupt. The world they built has been flawed from the start. Look how quickly hate spread and decimated them the moment people who were different appeared.” He sighs, and the elevator goes back up, takes a new path towards the ship itself. “The Earth's destruction is not an unfortunate accident. It is fate.”  
“Fate?!”  
Ryuzu turns, and smiles, as the elevator approaches a brightly lit opening.  
“Tell me, Kouji, why do you think that the Burnish burn?”

Chrono wakes up in the middle of the night.  
He groans slightly, his body sore and heavy. In his blood, the flames whisper, quietly reaching for something far away. He opens his eyes. Across the dark sky, thousands of stars shine. Call.  
_So much fire_ , he senses, sighs, _so far away_.  
The sun and the core of the earth are closer, and most of the time, it's them that he feels pulling at him. But sometimes, on quiet nights like this, he hears the call of the stars.  
He wonders if there are other flames like his, there. All the way across the galaxy. He wonders if they sing.  
And then the part of him that hungers for much more human fuel wakes, and growls, clenching at his stomach.  
Wincing, he sits up. Around and under him, on makeshift bunk beds, over a dozen children sleep.  
He jumps down from his bed, silent, and walks to the fire just outside the room of sorts, where Mikuru is sitting, sewing.  
“Please tell me it hasn't been longer than a day,” he sighs, dropping to the ground next to her.  
She laughs.  
“I kept you some dinner.”  
He spots the familiar basket next to her, and pulls it to his lap. The bread inside is wrapped in fabric and still warm, the pieces of dried meat and fruit inside invigorating when he tears a piece and drops it in his mouth.  
“How did I sleep for an entire day,” he sighs.  
“You needed it.”  
“Yeah, but the kids—”  
“I took care of them. They knew how hard you worked, I don't think they wanted us to wake you up either. And besides,” she adds with a side smile, “it was nice. Nostalgic, almost.”  
He chuckles.  
“I'm sure they were less trouble than I was.”  
She rolls her eyes at him.  
“You were no trouble at all.”  
“I dunno, taking care of a mute teenager with an accidental fire starting problem sounds like trouble to me.”  
“It was _complicated_ but it wasn't _trouble_.” She huffs. “Would you rather I'd just left you alone in the middle of nowhere to die?”  
“… not really.”  
“It's good that you want to live, Chrono.” She smiles, ruffles his hair. “Besides, you saved me too, you know.”  
“Huh?”  
“I'd lost everything too. For a while, I didn't know what to do with myself. And then I found you.” Her hand stays on his head, and her smile is soft. “Having someone to take care of helped. It gave me direction. I couldn't give up on myself, because you depended on me too.”  
“… I guess I can relate to that,” he says with a chuckle.  
She grins, and lets go of his head, returning to her sewing. Chrono bites into his bread.  
“… has it really been fifteen years?” he asks, thoughtful. “It feels like yesterday.”  
“That's what happens when you're always working and you never take breaks,” Mikuru teases.  
Chrono looks up at her, shooting her a fakely offended look.  
“Really? I just got up and all you're gonna do is lecture me?”  
“Someone has to. If I didn't keep an eye on you, you'd just run yourself ragged.”  
He rolls his eyes, takes another bite, and puts the bread down.  
“It just makes me wonder, y'know. It feels so close but so far too… Everyone else has a before, but I… don't.” He opens his hand, and flames come to dance on it, like they always have. Blue and pink sparks, flying before the redder glow of the cooking fire. “I just wonder… what it was. What it was that made me awaken.”

“This,” Ryuzu says, gesturing at the scene under them, “is what's going to save humanity.”  
Kouji gasps. Across the glass screen that separates the room they're in from the lab underneath, several people in radiation suits are setting up machines. And checking the restraints on the strange round contraption that someone is strapped to, limbs spread tight.  
It's Shin. The owner of Coffee Capital.  
“What are you—”  
“Be silent and watch.”  
Ryuzu's tone is sharper than usual, and Kouji shuts up, on reflex.  
“Sir,” a woman in a labcoat says, “we're ready for the test, but are you sure…”  
“Go ahead. I invited him myself.”  
The woman shoots Kouji a look, but she turns, sits next to a monitor, and talks into a microphone.  
“Everyone, step back. Warp test starts in one minute.”  
The people in suits walk back towards the glass wall, a shield rising in front of them. The only ones left are a single person in a suit, in a large cylinder, and the Burnish on the round frame.  
“Thirty… twenty nine…”  
Shin looks up. Kouji wonders if he recognised him.  
“Three… two… one… Prometech engine startup!”  
The frame starts spinning. Slowly, at first, and then gradually faster, pulling on Shin's limbs, and with the speed and pain the flames within him rise, burst, and are absorbed by the contraption. His scream is almost a keen, and with it other cries almost brush Kouji's ears, just at the edge of his senses.  
Before he can think about it, people underneath shout. Above the person in the cylinder, a dark gap into the fabric of reality is tearing.  
He gasps. In a mere second, the person in the suit is pulled up, sucked into the gap. And lands heavily in the other cylinder at the other end of the room.  
Kouji's mind is reeling.  
_Warp engine? Teleportation? Is that how he means to leave Earth?_  
“Test successful!” calls the scientist. “Shut down the engine!”  
The frame's mad spinning slows, but Kouji's mind won't. He watches in horror as Shin sags, exhausted and pained, in his restraints. As the tips of his fingers turn to ash and fall to the ground.  
_We burn, and we heal, until we can't._  
A little girl with a missing leg, crying that she'd rather die than be taken again. People huddled together for warmth in an icy cave, their fraying bodies covered in bandages. Chrono's tearless, voiceless pain as the man he was trying to save turns to ash under his fingers.  
_Although the Burnish are the ones who brought this world to ruin, it is them who will save humanity from its plight._  
Kouji's teeth hurt from clenching them.  
_But at what cost… at what cost…_  
“Do you know why the Burnish burn?” Ryuzu asks, stepping close behind him, close enough that he can feel the heat of his body radiating through their clothes. “Because they want to turn this rotten world to ashes.”

“Don't worry, Tokoha. All of us are working to create a better world. Even that girl I told you about.”  
“You've talked to her?”  
“Oh, yes. She was in my department for an entire day. She said she was trying to create a world in which the person she loves could be safe.”  
“… that's kinda romantic.” She chuckles. “Goes to show we're all the same in the end, huh? Burnish love and hurt just like we do.”

Kouji doesn't turn. Somehow, he's too scared to look at the face of the man who always smiled at him.  
He's scared that he'll still be smiling.  
“People become Burnish when they give up on this world. When the pain, the anger, the disgust at the unfairness of it becomes too strong for their heart, they call the flames to themselves to turn it all to ash. And then the flames control them, tell them to burn hotter, until there is nothing left. It is the world's, and humanity's, self-destruct mechanism. The world has become so rotten that it is burning itself down.”  
Shin and Kamui, joking and listening their ways through their customers' rotten days to bring a little cheer to their lives and let them walk out happier. Chrono, kneeling in front of children with a smile and telling them he will fight an army alone, if need be, for them.  
“The Burnish's strongest desire is to burn, Kouji. So I will grant them that wish. And as they do, we will leave this corrupt world behind, and build a new one. A clean one.”  
“How will that change anything?” he whispers. Humans will still be humans, wherever they go.  
“As I said, it is an Ark. Like Noah's, it will only carry those who are pure.” He lays a hand on Kouji's shoulder. “But have no fear. I have not been biased in my selection. Every choice has been done by computer simulation. They have determined the ten thousand most competent and virtuous residents of this city.”  
“Ten thousands!?”  
“Our seeds for a new, perfect future. For the rebirth of humanity.”  
_This is wrong_ , Kouji's heart cries. _Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong._  
Even at his worst, even when he wanted so desperately to just die, to go to sleep and never wake up, he's never thought that everyone else should go down with him.  
_Liar_ , part of him whispers. _You did._  
He did, briefly, when he was young and desperate. But that was before Burning Rescue. Before he broke out of the self-built prison of isolation.  
_Not anymore. Not anymore._  
“This is madness,” he whispers.  
“Madness? It is this world that is mad. This world and its people, killing each other over money and petty squabbles and differences.”  
“Even if they are… people… people aren't _fuel_.”  
“What does it change? If they don't die now, they will when the planet fails. And besides, I am giving them what they always wanted. But more importantly, Kouji,” he murmurs, and he's closer than ever now, his hand impossibly tight on Kouji's shoulder, “what are you going to do about it?”  
“I… I…”  
“If you give up this childish resistance and help me, I will give you a chance to see our new perfect world. And even if you don't, you can play a part in the salvation of humanity. Just like they will.”  
It's wrong. It's all wrong. And yet, deep inside him, he knows.  
The Ryuzu Myoujin who always smiled at him is right there. He did always say he would lead humanity down a bright new path.  
He was the one who was blind this entire time.  
“I… I can't.”  
A chuckle, breaking against his neck.  
“As I thought.”  
A gun's barrel presses against his back.  
“Ryuzu, what—”  
“Unfortunately, I can't tolerate any setbacks. If you won't join me, then I'm afraid your time is up.”  
Hands, gloved and armoured, grab his shoulders, his arms. Before he can fight back, he's pulled down and turned and forced to his knees. When did the soldiers even get there? He'd been too caught up in the horror playing out before his eyes.  
“R-Ryuzu!”  
Someone pulls his head back, hard. Smiling, Ryuzu steps back towards him and reaches down to tip his chin up, gently, tenderly.  
“Don't worry, child,” he says, brushing Kouji's bangs out of his face. “I know you've wanted to die for a long time. I'll finally grant you that wish.”

“I guess I should try to rest more,” Chrono sighs. “We've got a lot to do tomorrow.”  
“Are you going to find families for them?”  
“If they want to. I don't wanna force them. But before that… I want to help them make the place their own. You can't really start moving forward without that, you know?”  
She smiles.  
“I know.”

Ryuzu straightens, and walks away.  
“Take him away. Professor, prepare the Prometech slots for Anjou's engine. The fuel will be arriving shortly.”  
“Yes sir!”

“We should really do this more often,” Tokoha sighs, putting down her empty bowl.  
“Everything feels better after a nice warm meal, doesn't it?”  
She laughs.  
“You can say it like that.”  
“Do you want to stay the night? You're not on duty until noon tomorrow, right?”  
“… maybe.”  
“It'll be just like old times.”  
She smiles, and it hurts a little, but it's good. It means she didn't forget.  
“… yeah. Just like old times.” She grins. “Let's do it.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all downhill from here, folks!  
> Also, Mikuru loving hours

Chrono's carrying sheets to his corner of the shelter when the alarm signal rings.  
He drops them immediately, a shiver running through his entire body. Around him, people start whispering nervously, stopping whatever they were doing. He pushes himself to a fast jog and crosses the distance to his home.  
It's too early. Too early for it to be coincidence. And they had a drill planned just _tomorrow_ , too.  
“Mikuru,” he calls as he reaches her, but she's already on her feet and lining up the children who were staying with them.  
“I know,” she says. “Leave it to me.”  
He speeds up towards the stairs to the watch cabin. Behind him, Mikuru starts giving orders, voice calm but powerful.  
They do drills regularly. All the residents of the shelter know the plan. Evacuate, split, and find shelter in the volcano's cracks. If you get close enough to lava, Freeze Force can't follow you. But this time, they have _dozens_ of new people. It's the worst timing he could imagine.  
When he reaches the watch cabin, the grim looks on the guards' faces tell him everything he needs to know.  
 _Shit._  
He takes the binoculars they hand him, and looks in the general direction of Promepolis.  
The vehicles aren't hard to find. It's almost like they don't _care_. Like they're _that_ sure of their superiority. His heart tightens when he sees a helicopter with them.  
“If they go around us from the air they can cut off our evacuation routes,” he tells them through gritted teeth, handing back the binoculars. “I'm gonna shoot it down. Gather the rest of the fighters and make covering the evacuation your priority.”  
“Boss, what if they're just passing through and trying to scare us into revealing ourselves?”  
He shakes his head.  
“The timing is too perfect. They know exactly where we are. Let's get moving while we still have a chance.”  
“Yes sir,” they say, moving towards the exit.  
“Oh, and…” He swallows. “… don't hold back. We can't afford to have any mercy. They won't have any for us. Once the evacuation's secured, we have to take them down. For good.”  
Their eyes widen. But they don't waste time thinking or arguing about it. A second later, they nod, and run out.  
Chrono sits on the window, slings his legs out, and pushes himself out, using his fire to shoot himself to the broken road that serves as their roof. In the distance, the tanks and helicopter are visible to the naked eye, approaching at high speed. Straight for the shelter indeed.  
 _How? How did they find us?_  
If they'd managed to follow the trucks' trace, those on watch would have seen scouts. Not to mention it would have taken them longer to get there. No, for them to have reached them so quickly, there are only two possibilities he can think of. The first is that they already knew of his location, and just waited for the wave of new arrivals before attacking. The second…   
The second is one he feels too sick to consider. 

The vehicles move closer. Under him, shouts and hurried voices, the sound of people running.   
“Chrono!”  
He looks down. Luna's pushing her head and torso out of the window he flew out of.  
“Luna! Follow the others, they'll lead you to the evacuation routes!”  
“I can fight too!” she says, pushing herself up by the force of her flames much like he'd done earlier. “I know I'm new, but I'm strong! They said so when they tested me!”  
He hesitates for half a second. The enemy is getting closer; he doesn't have _time_ to argue. And besides, does he really have the luxury of refusing a powerful fighter's help?  
“… you take orders from Tsuneto. No heroics. Staying organised is our best chance.”  
She smiles.  
“Okay! You can count on me!”  
With a nod, Chrono pushes himself up towards the sky, his flames wrapping around him in his usual armour.  
 _I won't let you hurt them._  
If he can stop them in their tracks before they reach the shelter, they can just evacuate and look for a new location.  
He shoots towards the helicopter.  
Ice projectiles start coming at him. With a twist of his body, he surrounds himself in a shield of flames, sending them ricocheting away. Underneath, the first tank shoots its canon. But it's too slow, much too slow. He dodges the blast, and throws himself at the helicopter, grabbing its landing gear and pulling, letting his momentum swing him around it. It swerves under the impact. People scream.  
Chrono clenches his teeth and shoots a bolt of fiery lightning through its underside, impaling it right through, all the way up and through the machinery powering the rotors.  
The metal groans. Something above him blows up. In a chorus of screams, the helicopter starts to fall, tumbling towards the ground. Chrono lets go, shoots up, and throws a stream of flames at it, forcing it towards the first tanks.  
They try to swerve, but it's too late. The helicopter crashes on the two first tanks in the line, and goes up in flames.  
 _Why couldn't you just leave us alone? You have the entire Earth for yourselves, the pretty cities, the fertile plains. Why do you come hunting us in our last little corners of safety, until we have to kill just to stay alive?_  
But there's no choice now.  
 _Why? What's so profitable about our bodies that our lives don't mean anything?_  
He shoots down, towards the next tank in line. They blast ice at him, but they put defense over mobility, and their cannon doesn't turn fast enough to keep up with him. He twists around it, shoots a spear of flames into it, then a stream. The tank swerves hard. The hutch on top opens, soldiers scrambling out of it.  
He throws a blast at them, knocking them out. If they survive, he can take them as prisoners, maybe.  
“My, my, finally getting serious, are we?”  
The voice getting projected at him is that of the blue haired man who participated in his arrest.  
“If you get out of the tanks _now_ , I'll spare you,” Chrono hisses, letting the flames carry his voice.  
“Oh my, how generous. And there I thought you wanted to kill us all.”  
“I'm not that kind of monster.”  
If he can really disarm them… then maybe he could keep them prisoner until everyone has moved to safety. Wrap them in a cage of fire. _Something_.  
The man laughs.  
“That's cute. But should you really be worrying about us?”  
“Huh?”  
“You really shouldn't leave your home unattended, you know.”  
Panic grips at his stomach. He turns, just in time to see spikes of ice rise from the shelter.  
 _No_.  
Throwing a wall of fire in front of the remaining tanks, he shoots in the opposite direction. More crystals are piercing through the openings in the building holding their little settlement, shooting out rhythmically like explosions triggered in sequence.  
 _How? How did they…_  
From behind the shelter, someone screams as ice explodes out of the ground.  
 _Land mines… how did they…_  
The people evacuating are in dissaray. Their well organised evacuation lines are broken, most of them too scared to take a step forward.  
 _How did this happen?_  
He bursts into the settlement. Every other home's worth, a giant urchin of ice crystals spears through the space and furniture, turning the hall into a forest of icy thorns. Some people are still trying to nagivate them. Too many were caught in the ice.  
Roaring, he throws wave after wave of fire, melting the ice to free them. But it's slow, too slow.  
 _At this rate, they'll be here before I've freed everyone._  
He pulls onto the world's fire even harder, gathers it, explodes out. The flames clear out a circle around him, freeing a handful of people. But not enough.  
 _Come on… come on…_  
He moves forward, gathers his fire again, releases.  
“Chrono!”  
On the other side, other flames come to join him, melting a small path through the thorns of ice.  
“Tsuneto!” Chrono calls out as his subordinates emerge from the ice. “How's the evacuation going?!”  
“We can't reach the volcano! The entire path is a minefield, people are terrified. I sent a group to clear a path but everyone's panicking. We might as well regroup and fight them at this rate!”  
“ _Damnit!_ How did this happen?”  
“Chrono, these blew up just after you launched the evacuation,” Tsuneto says, gesturing at the ice. “They were planted before.”  
“I know, I _know_!”  
How could anyone have betrayed them? How could they sell out those who suffered with them? But it's the only explanation he can think of. Someone planned this attack from the start. And probably led the enemy to them, too.  
Tsuneto looks at him, unusually grim.  
“What do we do? Keep trying to push forward? Or do we call back the other fighters and face them all head on?”  
“… tell the others to protect the civilians. Form a wall of fire around them, don't let the enemy through. Then you three come back to me. If you find Luna, bring her along. We'll take on Freeze Force together.”  
Again. Again, he has to ask them to risk their life for him.  
Tsuneto nods and runs off. Chrono sends fireball after fireball through the corridor, then turns back towards the entrance, and the advancing Freeze Force tanks.

He walks towards the enemy. Rather than waste his fire on flying, he throws stream after stream of fire at the tanks, keeping them at a distance. They get frozen, but it still slows them. Long enough for the others to catch up with him and form a more coordinated offense, hopefully.  
“Chrono!”  
He turns his head just for a fraction of second. Behind him, Luna and Am are running to catch up.  
“Luna? You need to protect yourself!”  
“I don't know how to do your armour thing! But I can fly!”  
“They'll shoot you down from the sky. Stay here and help me with the barrage. Am, cover her! When Tsuneto and the others arrive, we spread out and close in. For now we need to stop them from going around the settlement and reaching the civilians!”  
“Got it!” Am says, throwing a wall of fire in front of them. Well, it's not as powerful as those of a trained Mad Burnish, but it'll do its job.   
The tanks keep pushing forward, trying to advance. But something feels wrong. Rather than break away from their course to try and flank the retreating Burnish, they keep aiming straight forward towards Chrono and his group.  
 _Do they think they can just crush me and then pick them out at their leisure? Or is there another trap closer to the volcano?_  
He can't afford to go check. All he can do is keep them at bay for now.  
“Chrono!”  
Finally, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kei, followed by Tsuneto and Karl, rushing towards him in full Burnish armour.  
 _Finally. It's time to fight back._  
“We're here!”  
“Spread out in a half-circle! We'll close them in!”  
“Got it!”  
“Chrono,” Luna calls, voice shaking. “Chrono, wait. Look over there!”  
He turns. From the other side, aimed straight for the shelter, comes another group of attackers. More tanks. And more importantly, many more helicopters.  
 _They showed us the first group to start the evacuation and create a panic._ Understanding comes too late. There's no way he can split his too small forces to deal with both groups while the rest of the gang protects the panicked civilians. And no way to reach _them_ on time.  
 _They played us perfectly. Sending me back to the shelter was a ploy to stop me from noticing the other group._  
He swallows.  
“… you guys hold this group back. I'll try to—”  
Something hits his hip. He gasps, but too late. Pain explodes in his side as ice tears through his flames, through his body.  
His stream of flames falters. On one of the tanks pushing towards them, the Blue haired soldier stands up, pulls out a rifle, takes aim.  
The bullet tears right into Chrono's heart. He stumbles backwards, choking, too winded to scream.  
“ _Chrono!_ ”  
His subordinates rush to him, trying to catch him before he falls. But mixed with their cries, there's another voice, filled with fear and incomprehension.  
“… Am? Am, why…”  
“Stay out of this, Luna.”  
Her voice sounds cold. As cold as the ice piercing through his chest, spreading into him, choking his flames. He looks up at her ice-smooth face, trying desperately to _burn_.  
“Am, I don't get it!”  
“I said _stay out of this_. Step back. Freeze Force won't hurt you.”  
“Huh?”  
“You!” Tsuneto yells. “What did you do to the boss?”  
“Don't take it personally,” Am says, pulling a small freeze gun from the back of her belt. “It's just obvious who's going to win this war. I don't intend to lose everything a second time.”  
“You _bastard_!”  
“T-tsuneto—” Chrono tries to gasp. “R-run.”  
But it's too late. The tanks are closing on them, circling them. The Freeze Force lieutenant still has his rifle pointed at Chrono.  
“Maybe you really should have killed us all while you had the chance,” he says. “You might have stood a chance. Unfortunately, I'm supposed to bring _you_ all back alive. For now. Can't waste precious resources.”  
“Leave him alone!”  
Tsuneto, Karl and Kei form a wall around him.  
“We won't let you touch him!”  
 _Run_ , he wants to shout, but his voice won't come, and it's too late at this point. They're surrounded.  
“Now, now,” the man says as soldiers stream from the tanks to point freeze guns at them. “I can do this _without_ too much pain, or I can make sure you spend every moment until you lose consciousness wishing you could scream. I wouldn't mind the second one, but you might want to surrender quietly instead.” He flicks his fingers in the direction of Luna and Am. “Restrain them.”  
“What?” Am gasps. “Wait! That wasn't the deal!”  
“I said she would get special treatment. She will. But you didn't think we'd let Burnish run free, right? I'm taking you back with us.”  
“Myoujin said she'd be free!”  
“Oh, she will. In a matter of speaking. You all will.”  
With a snarl, she brings out her flames. But the guns are already pointed on her; in two seconds, she's already covered in ice.  
“Am! Am!”  
The soldiers grab Luna before she can fight back, and close cuffs around her wrists and feet. Then Am's. The group aimed at Chrono still hasn't moved.  
Until one of them looks up, yelling.  
“Look out!”

They look up. Above them, a giant ball of flame is forming.  
For the first time since he first saw him, the man's smile falls.  
Soldiers scream. The man shoots at it, but to no avail. He lowers his gun with a click of his tongue.  
“Fall back! Find that Burnish!”  
They don't have to look. Before they can spread, the fiery sphere crashes to the ground, washing warmth over Chrono and the other Burnish, thawing away at the ice on his limbs. But the one in his heart remains as cold as ever. If anything, the more he tries to burn, the harder it freezes.  
From the sky, a gigantic Burnish armour with mechanical-like wings lands. An armour he hasn't seen used in almost ten years.  
“M… Mikuru…” he gasps.  
“You can kill us,” she proclaims, “but you can't snuff out our flame!” _No, no no_ , Chrono's heart cries. _Don't do this!_ “Karl! Kei! Tsuneto!”  
“Yes Ma'am!”  
 _Run… why aren't you running…_  
“Take her down!” the blue haired man shouts.  
The tanks shoot. Mikuru calls a vortex of fire to wrap around them, reflecting the shots.  
“Hurry!”  
“M-Mikuru, don't—”   
Flames wrap around him. They carry his body up, wraping tight, tight. The noise of the helicopters gets ever louder.  
The tanks shoot again. The vortex starts to falter.  
The flames rise, harden. A cannon, aimed at the sky.  
 _No!_  
“We're ready!” Karl calls.  
With a yell, Mikuru feeds another blast into her vortex. She turns towards him.  
“I love you, Chrono. Thank you for everything. Good luck.”  
The _please don't_ freezes on his lips.  
The cannon shoots. Chrono flies, barely conscious, past the advancing helicopters, above, beyond, away and away.  
 _Mikuru… Mikuru…_  
He flies.  
 _Why did everyone…_  
He flies.  
 _How did I let this happen…_  
He falls.  
 _Don't go…_  
The world crashes into his back.  
Darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh I am so late on this I'm sorry  
> I love Mamoru but I don't love writing slow sneaky scenes

Mamoru’s smile lasts until Tokoha’s motorbike has turned the corner.  
In the warm light of his soft indoor lamps, bathing in good food and his little sister’s presence, rumours of cruelty and strange events without cause had been easy to dismiss. He was where he was safest. With his family. Even if it was just the two of them… even if it was just the two of them now, they’d both grown up enough that they could make each other feel like home again.  
Laying in the dark with her resting in the next room, however, had brought a very different feeling.  
Restlessness. Doubt. And deep underneath, barely acknowledged, the fear that everything would be taken away again, if he had the hubris of taking everything for granted and relying on everyone else to keep things running, to keep him and themselves safe.  
They can be family again, because he worked hard, fought tooth and nail to safeguard what he could and rebuild what he couldn’t. He isn’t going to be complacent _now_.  
And besides, Tokoha has always had good instincts. It’s the reason she does so well both as a fighter and a firefighter, he thinks.  
So by the time she wakes up, he’s prepared a large and copiously caffeinated breakfast, has plastered his most convincing smile on his face, and checked the timetable of every Foundation employee who’s allowed to set foot in the labs.

“P-Professor Anjou? Aren’t you on your day off?”  
Maybe Mamoru should feel bad. The young man hasn’t done anything wrong (or so he hopes, at least), and playing with his heart is unfair, even if all he’s offering is attention, rather than anything romantic. He’s dealt with a lot of different kinds of people, both at his job and to even _get_ there, and those whose validation comes from others are usually easier to lead where he wants them, but that doesn’t mean he feels good about it.  
But weighed against Tokoha’s slightly troubled eyes when she said the word ‘civilian’, those considerations suddenly feel very flimsy.  
 _If she’s right, then I’d be helping any decent person in this place by exposing what they’ve been unwittingly taking part in. And if they’re not unwitting, then…_  
… then he isn’t about to let himself feel guilty for this.  
“I am,” he says, sunny yet concerned. It gets the young man’s attention immediately. “But I was going over my data at home and there’s a discrepancy in the energy conversion readings… I’d have left it until tomorrow, but if there’s a leak or we’re operating based on inaccurate readings, it could be a safety issue… If we overload the reactor, or the condensers...”  
“Oh shit—um. Pardon my language, Professor.”  
“Don’t worry about it.”  
“Okay, um, do you need any help in there?”  
“I’m just going to check the computers,” he says pleasantly. “It shouldn’t take long.”  
“I’ll escort you,” the young man says. “In case there’s any problems.”  
“Of course. Thank you for your help.”  
He lets him take the lead. As they reach the first scanner, the young man uses his own access card, which wasn’t strictly necessary at this point, but is still preferable.  
“I won’t be too long,” he says as he turns on his computer and slides into his seat, intending to take a very long time.

The startup time gives him time to prepare some of his backup measures. The little capsules he had in his pocket, he casually drops into his pen holder, idly interrupting himself to enter—unfortunate, but necessary—his password into the computer. His case goes under the desk, just put in place at first, and then gradually pushed behind the computer’s system unit when his unwitting accomplice isn’t looking in his direction.  
And then he pulls out a spreadsheet, and pretends to work.

He doesn’t only pretend. Rather than stare blankly at the screen or enter nonsense into cells, he goes back and tracks all the experiments of the last few months. How much energy was provided, and how it was provided. And sure enough, the output of the batteries he’s been given are fluctuating, more than would really be normal if he always used the same model. He’d blamed it on the inherent instability of Burnish flames, and the usual fluctuations in any experiment, but now that he looks at them again, at the overall pattern, a much more simple, and much more chilling hypothesis starts to form in his mind.  
Behind him, the security guard shifts, uncomfortable with his silence. He keeps playing around with his spreadsheets, letting him get well and truly bored, and worried about leaving his post, however calm, for too long.  
And then, just when he thinks the young man might actually ask if he will be finished soon, he deepens his frown, and drops his line.  
“I was worried about this.”  
“What’s the matter?” the young man asks, grateful for _some_ kind of development actually happening.  
“The issue seems to come from the condensers. Although I don’t know whether it’s the condensers themselves, or the measuring instruments monitoring them.”  
“Is that bad?”  
“I don’t know…” He turns to face him, all professional concern and eager trust. “You don’t think we could go in and have a look at them, could you? I don’t usually work there, but if there really is an issue, I’ll need to call the technician in charge as soon as possible. He’s not working today, I think.”  
“No, I don’t think he is… I probably shouldn’t stay away from my post for too long though…” He pauses. Mamoru holds his breath. “Tell you what. I’ll open the door for you. There’s always a crew working in there, so if you need any more help, you can ask them.”  
Mamoru smiles.  
“That would be splendid. Thank you.”

The bright side of actually working at Myoujin Foundation is that even though he absolutely shouldn’t be in this building—a fact that is, in itself, making him even more suspicious—Mamoru has mastered the art of walking like he belongs there, which, in fact, he does. The Foundation’s labs are his turf. As he thanks the security guard and heads towards the room he’s been pointed to, neither of the people present at the other end of the corridor give him more than a passing glance.  
Which is fortunate. He would have had a harder time hiding the card he just ‘borrowed’ from his new friend otherwise.  
He’ll return it, of course. After finding it on the ground near the door. Really, isn’t it lucky that he found it? He wouldn’t have wanted him to get into trouble for his sake.  
He walks into the indicated room, casually. It’s small and dark and empty, save for the giant cylindrical condensers, humming with power. Just in case someone does come in to check what he’s up to, he turns on the light, and goes to work, taking a quick look at the instruments monitoring the condensers.  
And freezes.  
 _What on Earth…_  
He checks again, just to be sure. None of the values displayed are in any way coherent with the readings he’s been given on his end. It is literally impossible, considering the energy these condensers actually store, for them to actually be the main power source supplying the energy for the warp experiments that have taken much of his time in the last two years.  
He had suspected as much. But it was a nebulous suspicion, a concept, a mystery to be solved, if an uncomfortable one. Now, presented with evidence, he almost feels sick.  
Every experiment, every number written in his spreadsheets, tastes very different now.  
 _… I need to find more evidence. No one will believe me based on inadequate equipment alone._  
He leans against the door, for a moment, just to clear his head. Where to go from there? The facility is huge, even if this is the smaller building, and his confident attitude will only carry him so far. Sooner or later, someone is bound to actually ask what he’s doing there.  
He needs to move quickly.  
 _The pipes are heading down through the floor. If I can just find a stair or elevator…_  
The fire safety map. He spins on his heel, and actually looks at his side of the door. Sure enough, a laminated map takes much of its upper half.  
It doesn’t depict the lower floors at all. But it _does_ show where the stairs coming up from the lower levels are, and that’s already progress. The stairs themselves, with their major role in evacuation procedures, are sure to have more comprehensive ones.

He turns the light back off and heads out, walking unhurriedly but with purpose. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but the chill that has spread into his chest is giving him cool, sharp focus, and he quickly makes it to the stairs, without being stopped or even really registered. Downstairs, another map gives him the layout of the floor, but none of the rooms seem large enough for what he’s suspecting. No, what he’s looking for is a large lab, with a buffering area around it. He goes down another floor, then another.  
On the fourth floor, he notices an area on the map where smaller labs are replaced with a series of thick walls and empty spaces. Heart beating against his neck, he quickly goes down another flight of stairs, and looks for the fifth underground level’s map.  
 _There! The eastern corridor!_  
Pushing the door open, he peeks outside. This deep, the amount of people who would normally come is smaller, and thus, his presence is that much more suspicious. If he wants to go on, he’ll have to rely on actual stealth.  
Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anyone there. Unfortunately, the eastern corridor is closed by a fire door, complete with its card reader.  
For a second, he hesitates. He could still leave, if he wanted. If he left now, all he would have to do was return the card on his way out, and he could try to uncover the truth a different way.  
Or, he could swipe that card right now, and find out if his sneaking had been right and his guard friend really had access to this part of the facility. If he didn’t, then… it won’t take long for security to catch Mamoru. Especially when he has so many stairs to climb to freedom.  
 _… what would Tokoha do?_ he asks himself, and immediately he knows his answer, and swipes the card. Tokoha would never back down from something like this. If he wants to be reliable as an older brother, he needs to match her determination, and then some, and right now, it feels like he still has to catch up to her.  
The door opens. Hiding a sigh of relief, Mamoru walks forward, letting it close again behind him.

The corridor itself is empty. But in the distance, muffled by the hum of ventilation, voices reverberate through the walls, the actual words lost to the echo.  
He walks forward, slowly. His footsteps, no matter how light he tries to make them, seem to ring and echo through the entire corridor; his misplaced instinct pull at him, scream that _everyone in the building_ must have heard him. But the tone and rhythm of those distant voices doesn’t change. Pushing down the shaking in his breath, he steps even closer.  
Following the voices leads him to a door. But it’s unnamed, surprisingly, and unlike his own lab, there are no windows looking out towards the corridor. Frowning, he walks a little further, trying to find any such opening. He can’t walk in while people are there, obviously, but once he leaves, so does his only chance to ever get to the bottom of this.  
He’s still debating on how to handle the situation when the voices come closer.  
Mamoru’s reflexes take over.  
Before he’s even processed the information and what it means, his overwired nerves have thrown him away from the door, and towards the next one over. Without thinking, he opens it, and throws himself inside, the lock clicking just as a laugh and the noise of the other door opening reaches him.  
The voices come closer. Perfectly still, eyes closed, Mamoru stands with his back to the door, waiting to be discovered.  
Voices, and footsteps, walk past his door, close enough to brush the back of his neck, and then, dizzyingly, move past him, away, and disappear.  
After several long seconds, the air locked in Mamoru’s lungs finally burns enough that he breathes out, almost slumping against the door.  
After keeping his eyes closed for so long, the unlit room comes into focus quickly, the shapes all blurred on the edges and lit in shades of uniform, colourless grey and the soft red glow of the emergency exit, but still easily discernible. Tables, chairs, computers, several rows of anti-burnish hazard suits, hung on the very wall in immediate reach. And, taking up most of the opposite wall, a huge glass panel, with a door on the side and a heavy metal shutter at the top.  
Treading as light as he possibly can, Mamoru takes a few steps towards the glass wall, straining to look beyond.  
From the ceiling, the pipes that he’s been tracking all this time hang, reaching all the way down to the floor, plugged into two much bigger condensers. But they’re not alone. The same condensers also feed into much larger pipes, that run along the floor and disappear as they reach the wall, heading North.  
Heading towards Mamoru’s lab, and the underground chamber where his engine prototype is being built.  
He swears, leaning forward against the glass, his hands clenching painfully around the outcropping edge of the wall. The condensers, gigantic as they are, almost overshadowed the structure between them, but now that he’s even closer, he can see the platform, the restraints. And in the distance, suddenly catching his eye, the faintest glint of metal, like the bars of a cage.  
A handle turns behind him.  
 _Shit_.  
He makes to turn, but pain stabs into his side, before he even registers the gunshot’s _bang_.  
His legs grow weak.  
Grasping for the wall, he tries to turn, to keep himself upwards, and just slides down it, twisted halfway to the side. The already dark room blurs. The floor is cold when his head hits it.  
Heavy booted footsteps stop right next to his head.

He wakes up to the white of his lab.  
“How unfortunate,” Ryuzu Myoujin’s voice sighs, much too close for comfort. “You would have been much happier if you had just done your work without thinking too hard. Why do people always fight against what’s good for them?”  
He jerks, his body struggling on reflex, and finds his arms and legs strapped to the desk chair.  
“Don’t worry,” Myoujin says, finally coming into view as Mamoru looks up. “You won’t keep these restraints for long. This lab has been relocated.”  
“Relocated?”  
“For safety’s sake, of course. And,” he adds, his perfectly smooth face almost smiling, “to be closer to the engine. Now that we’ve acquired a candidate for the keystone, the final preparations can begin.”  
Mamoru’s breath stays stuck in his lungs.  
“… final preparations?”  
“You didn’t think this engine was only a prototype, did you? I thought you were more observant than that. There’s a reason we built it where we did.” He smiles, for real this time, as Mamoru’s mind races madly, adding up pieces that he should have noticed, _would_ have noticed if he hadn’t been so obsessed with contributing to progress and stability. “Now, Professor Anjou… I believe I hired you for a specific job. Since you don’t seem to care for days off, I suggest you get to work on it.”  
He pulls out a small communicator. Within seconds, four armed guards come into the room, two flanking him and two surrounding Mamoru.  
“Oh, and one last thing. We will double check your work for mistakes, of course, but before you think of sabotaging the project…” He smiles again, chillingly gentle. “Remember your little sister is on board too. She’s such an upstanding citizen, after all. It would be a waste to leave someone with such potential behind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then Mamoru THREW HIS FICA ON THE GROUND I mean-- 
> 
> "But how did they catch him so quickly" so Ryuzu actually has trackers on Every Single Person Who Works Or Has Access To The High Security Lab, including security guards. Having that access card used WITHOUT the tracker sent an alert immediately even if no one was actively checking screens to see him sneaking around.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we goooooooooooo  
> The Fun Begins :D

In the ice, Chrono's body sleeps.  
His heart screams.  
_Die_ , the ice bullet in his heart whispers. _Die. You've burned for too long. It's time to sleep. It won't hurt anymore after this._  
In him, around him, the flames scream.  
In the distance, he hears their call. The cries of anguish of flames forcefully torn from their Burnish, consumed and extinguished instead of burning. Deep underneath, they cry too, a multitude suddenly bereft, lost, reaching for the humans whose emotions they dance with. He's never felt them with such certainty, with the roaring of the world usually around him, but in the midst of the volcano's flames, they reach out to him, their point of focus, and their song reaches all the way into the Earth's core.  
And all the way into his.  
A spark.  
It's his emotions that wake first, loss and grief and anger, and the desperate, desperate need to protect. And in their wake, the flames rush into him, whispering the names in his heart until it's all he can hear, their voices calling out again and again like a rising crowd.  
_Tsuneto. Karl. Kei._  
_Mikuru_  
He burns. The flames of the Earth are _his_ , now, humming in a continuous stream from his heart to the core. He burns from the inside and the ice around him melts, shattered.  
He bursts into flame.  
_I won't forgive you_ , the flames whisper, and it's all he can hear. _I'll never forgive you. Give my people back. Give my family back. They are ours. THEY ARE OURS._  
The ice is in his heart, still freezing and impaling and trying to spread. But the flames keep him alive.  
He rips the bullet out. The pain tears at him, but his body heals, already filled with fire.  
_Give them back. GivE THEM BACK_  
They burn. Their body spreads, fed on the volcano's fire, rushing to their human core with a long keening cry. They stretch into wings, into a trailing tail of fire. Their human body spreads its arms, wrapped in their full body's head, and he too is flames. They are one.  
Beneath them, the volcano rumbles and bursts. Far away, Burnish still cry.  
They raise their head, and cry. And fly towards Promepolis.

In his cell, Kouji waits.  
He's not quite sure why. Not sure what for. What point is there in waiting for death?  
But then, what point _is_ there in doing it yourself?  
It's not like he could anyway.  
He presses his head against his crossed arms, leans forward on his knees. None of this is fair. All these people… all these people going about their lives, unknowing of their impending death, or of the massacre about to happen for their sake… they deserve a _choice_. For their lives. For their home.  
Even he… even he was finally starting to see something in this rotten world. The warmth of friendships. The smiles of people he could save. Weren't _they_ glad to be alive? Don't they deserve to be given that chance?  
What was the point of any of it? What good was any of it, if Ryuzu just planned to let them die from the start?  
They fed him a while ago, but he hasn't had the heart to eat any of it. The emptiness in him fights with the rising feeling of rebellion, and it makes his stomach twist. Any food would probably just come back up.  
_How long_ , he wonders. How long until Parnassus launches. The Earth's prognosis should give them at least a few months, but would Ryuzu wait that long? When he was taken away…  
… when he was taken away, Ryuzu was talking about fuel. If they're already rounding up the Burnish, if they're readying the engine, they might be planning to leave very soon.  
_The fuel will be arriving shortly._  
Did they get caught? Did Ryuzu know the entire time where they were? Did he know Kouji had come in contact with them because he'd seen it the entire time?  
...could Chrono really hold his ground against an entire army?  
The ground shakes. Kouji jerks to the side, and spreads his limbs to stop himself from being thrown against a wall.  
_An Earthquake?_ They've been more frequent in the last week, little tremors that reached even his cell, but—  
The cell shakes again, and this time, even laying on the ground doesn't stop him from being jerked around.  
_What…_  
With a loud crack and groan, the ceiling of his cell bursts open, crumbling and bending with heat. The wall collapses. From his corner of the cell, Kouji looks, awestruck, at the sky.  
The entire world is fire. Over the entire city, as far as he can see, the sky has been covered in a layer of flames, lighting the city in a deadly, ethereal pink and blue glow.  
And then the curtain of fire _moves_.  
It beats down, almost to where Kouji's cell is, fanning the streets with strong winds, and then moves back up, and as it circles and comes to face his location again, Kouji finally catches a glimpse of its full form.  
A phoenix.  
The fire bird cries out, anger and pain that shake Kouji's very bones, and sends a stream of fire raining onto the Foundation building. It crashes against the fortified walls and disperses. The bird rears, and keens again.  
It's crying. Like a thousand voices wailing in fear, in sadness, in anger. Every fleck of flame is vibrating with it, the cries brushing at Kouji's ears as flickers fly past.  
And even before it starts to talk, he know who's shedding those tears.  
“Chrono…”  
“ _GIVE THEM BACK_ ,” the voice that is Chrono's and yet isn't, a chorus of thousands made one, screams into the sky. “ _GIVE THEM BACK. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. WE WILL NOT HOLD BACK THIS TIME._ ”  
He can see it all. Ryuzu would let the world burn rather than abandon his plans, he knows that much now. If he can't have his perfect world, he'll let the one he sees as rotten turn to ash.  
If he's tucked away his 'seeds,' Kouji wouldn't put it past him to turn the rest of the city into a battlefield either, sacrificing its people to finally tear down what seems to be his last remaining enemy, the only one who could still stand against him.  
Ryuzu won't actually lift a finger to protect the innocents that should be under his care. That's something he doesn't think Chrono could really understand, and in this raging, melded state…  
He has to stop him. He has to make him _see_.  
Chrono would never forgive himself if his rampage became a carnage. And neither would he.  
Didn't he swear to protect Promepolis's citizens?  
Clenching his teeth, he pushes himself up, and jumps from his cell unto the next crumbled wall he can reach. And then again. Towards the open air.  
He is a firefighter, and today he is going to _stop this fire_ even if it costs him his life.

“Chris! What's the fire's status!”  
“There's no main blaze, but all those raining flames are starting little ones everywhere! We can't reach them all, it's endless!”  
“Keep spraying retardant and freeze up the streets! We need to secure the evacuation routes!” Ryuutarou takes a hard swerve left, only to face yet another street covered in a rising curtain of flames. “Tokoha!”  
“Yeah!”  
“Shoot straight ahead! We're going in!”  
“What!?”  
He goes straight in.  
“Give me more than a second's warning!” she yells, blasting high speed rounds of ice at the road ahead.  
The flames freeze and break as they crash their way through. She ducks behind her own machine gun to dodge the flying shards of ice, still shooting.  
“Damnit, damnit, damnit!”  
First, Kouji disappears. Then Mamoru stops answering her calls. And now this stupid _fire_. She doesn't have time for this. Who does this bird think it _is_?  
“It's targeting the Foundation,” Shion says, popping his head up next to her. Actually suited up, for once.  
Shit, how are they supposed to fight a fire like _this_ understaffed? Where's Kouji when you need him?  
“They have the best defenses, right? We can't just leave the rest of the city unprotected.”  
“She's right,” Ryuutarou tells them through their communicators, his voice grim. “Besides, if this thing actually attacks, I don't think there's anything we can do.”  
Tokoha mutters a word that her brother _definitely_ wouldn't have wanted to hear her say. Shion pretends not to hear.  
God, she _hates_ feeling powerless and she _hates_ when something feels untouchable. And more importantly she hates knowing how petty it is.  
“Tokoha…”  
“Shion, if you have time to talk, grab a gun of your own!”  
“No, look!”  
He points behind them. A figure's speeding towards them on a motorcycle, without a helmet. A figure with long white hair.  
“Kouji!?”  
He looks even worse than usual, and his hair and face bear obvious scars from falling flames and flying ice, but it's him, driving at full speed and catching up to them.  
“Kouji!” she yells, half relief and half offended shock. “Where _were_ you?”  
“No time to talk! Chief!”  
“Yeah?”  
“I know you're already short on hands, but can you spare me Shion and Tokoha?”  
“You have a plan? It better be a good one.”  
“I know how to stop him. We can't let him ravage the city. But I'm going to need help.”  
With no warning, Ryuutarou drifts to an almost halt.  
“Climb in and brief us. Dran, take over the ice gun.” By the time Kouji's climbed in, he's already sped up again, in the other direction. “Change of plans, team! We're going to the Foundation!”

The tower where the flames’ enemy resides is engulfed in fire, once more, and once more it emerges untouched when the flames retreat.  
They raise their head and scream, a keen that makes the ground and the buildings shake. On the very edge of the white group of buildings, several walls have collapsed under the assault, and humans scrambled out, but the closer they get to the central tower, the less the buildings seem to bend under the heat and force, and the tower itself stands untouched like an insult, like a challenge. Stream and stream of flame rushes to assault it. But to no avail.  
At its base, a gun spins around its base and aims at them with a great ray of ice. With a snarl, they face it head on, overpowering it with heat.  
“ _GIVE THEM BACK!_ ”  
They hate. A feeling so alien, to the flames themselves, and even to the human at their core, but now they burn with it, without respite, without limit. Under the ground, other flames, other lives are crying in fear, and the longer they cry, the more the flames’ fire burns hot, hard, merciless.  
They ram forward, shaking the tower. What they can’t burn, they can always break. They would die before letting their family be hurt, before giving up on the lives they swore to protect. They will go down with their enemy if they must.  
The tower shakes, but holds. They swoop at it again, grasp its neck in their claws, and hit the structure at the top. Again, and again.  
The thin, delicate neck of the tower creaks. Shouts reach them from inside.  
Ice hits their leg. They flail in dismay, melting and burning it down, but refuse to give. The tower must be broken. The Burnish must be freed. Ryuzu Myoujin must _pay_.  
“BURNISH!”  
On the topmost structure, a small trap door opens, and out comes a tall, thin figure, its long black hair flowing behind it along with its cape.  
“ _RYUZU MYOUJIN… **RYUZU MYOUJIIIIIIN**_ ”  
How long they have yearned to see this face, to fight this man one on one, rather than playing hide and seek with his armies and its technologies. So many tears shed, so many songs they had to sing, so many nightmares they had to soothe. And now, finally, after so many years, the man who caused them all stands before them.  
And the time for mercy is past.  
“FACE ME, BURNISH!” Ryuzu Myoujin clamours, his even voice projecting effortlessly across the space separating him from their head. In front of their body, he is minuscule, and yet, the feelings that always held their heart in their grip at the sight of someone smaller than them are silent.  
Finally, they will crush the pain at its source.  
They let go of the tower, rear their head back to charge their hottest fire, and beat their wings one last time, ready to plunge.

“Are you two ready?” Chief Ryuutarou asks Shion and Tokoha.  
“This is the craziest plan I’ve ever heard of,” Tokoha mutters, “and considering this team, that’s saying something.”  
“See it this way,” Shion answers her brightly, “just a week ago, we couldn’t even have pulled it off!”  
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? We haven’t even _tested_ these things!”  
“It’s hitting the Foundation’s main tower,” Chris calls out. “If you two don’t go now, you won’t have time to get into position before something happens.”  
“On it, on it. Shion, on three?”  
Seconds later, they’re off, flying with a huge hammock-like roll of flame-proof net trailing between them. Watching them rise into the sky, Kouji feels, not for the first time, but _clearly_ for the first time, that the chemistry of the minds in his team is somewhat of a miracle.  
His plan had been foolish. A desperate attempt. Now, with the improvements made to their mechs in his absence, it’s only foolishly brave. And it just might work.  
He believes, because he refuses not to, that it will work.  
“You’ve matured in a week,” Chief Ryuutarou tells him, driving the truck around in the opposite direction at speeds that would get him arrested if he was at the wheel of any other vehicle.  
Kouji doesn’t answer. His eyes are still trailed on the sky, on the terrifyingly beautiful curtain of pink and teal beating over all their heads. On Chrono’s flaming body, locked in a deathly embrace with the Foundation tower.  
“We’re almost in position!” Chris tells them. “Kouji, you ready?”  
“Yes.”  
And it feels good, to have it be the truth.  
“Hop in, then! Launch in ten seconds!”  
Kouji squeezes his mech into their cannon’s small compartment. Fully rebuilt and tinkered with during the entire week, the cockpit and controls feel more organic than ever, and for the first time in maybe forever, Kouji feels truly confident.  
He has to stop him. He _will_ stop him. And this mech, this team, are where he’s at his best.  
He might not know how to fight betrayal and pain. But he knows how to fight a fire.  
“Three! Two! One!”  
He braces.  
“Launch!”  
He shoots into the sky. Into the flames. Halfway up, his mech opens up, rearranges itself in the most aerodynamic configuration. Pink flames cover his cockpit, but they’re not solid, not focused on him, and he shoots right through them. Towards their heart.  
“ _ **RYUZU MYOUJIIIIIIIIN...**_ ”  
The whole sky, the whole city shakes with the strength of Chrono’s cry, with the pain and anger in it. Kouji shoots towards its core.  
He hits the phoenix’s head, and the world is fire.  
“Chrono!”  
It burns. Even his firefighting mech, designed to withstand the hottest flames, barely holds against the inferno that is the fire’s core. In the phoenix’s gigantic eye, he sees Chrono, incandescent, eyes and hair aflame, and his gaze turns to Kouji, in shock, then anger.  
“ _GET OUT OF OUR WAY!_ ”  
The world lurches. Chrono’s gigantic head of fire shakes violently, trying to throw him off. They tumble for just a few meters, and then his wings beat again, sending fire flying in every direction.  
Kouji holds on with every scrap of strength he has, his foot hovering just above the jetpack’s controls.  
“Chrono! Calm down! This isn’t you! This isn’t what you want!”  
“ _GET OUT OF OUR WAY. HE MUST PAY. WE MUST SAVE EVERYONE. WE WON’T HAVE MERCY FOR KILLERS ANYMORE!_ ”  
Fire engulfs him. His mech starts to creak. Holding back tears as the heat burns at his eyes, Kouji pulls himself even closer to Chrono’s burning form.  
“Ryuzu isn't going to lift a finger to save the citizens, Chrono! Are you going to punish them for the crime of existing on the wrong side of the fence?”  
Fire lashes at him again. But this time, it seems to have a mind of its own. Chrono’s eyes, still aflame, seem to freeze, to drift, as if listening to the call of something far, far away.  
“He’ll let you kill them all before he’ll let you even get close to your people, Chrono! The whole city is already on fire! Didn’t you say… _Didn’t you say that the Mad Burnish don’t kill?_ ”  
A flash of recognition, of fear, of pain. For just a fraction of second, the fire burning him relents.  
It’s more time than Kouji needs. He presses down with all his strength, and sends his mech forward at full power, bursting through the shell of flames and into Chrono’s actual human body, wrapping his arms around him.  
For just a heartbeat, he catches sight of Ryuzu under them, his severed arm glowing with a chilling, unearthly light.  
They burst out of the flames, with all the strength of Kouji’s mech, and all that of Chrono’s fire. Fast, too fast. Kouji gasps, holds on to Chrono’s body, braces for impact, but instead of a building, it’s Shion and Tokoha’s extended net that he hits, just barely slowing him down.  
And then the momentum catches up to them, and sends all four of them flying, over the city, over the forest, towards the snow-covered mountains.

Over the city, the gigantic bird of flames hovers, hesitant, and dissipates, its flames melting away like the whispers of a thousand lost children.

“We’re going too fast!” Shion cries.  
The city flies away, and Tokoha’s calm with it.  
“Kouji! _Kouji_! Turn off your jets!”  
“I… I did,” comes the choked reply.  
The ball of mech and human inside their net is still burning, and still flying at full speed, and it’s all Tokoha can do to hang on to the net.  
“We’re starting to fall!” Shion calls. “Our trajectory’s going down!”  
“If we fall in the forest, it’ll go up in flames!” Tokoha cries. Not to mention the low chances of them not dying on impact, but once a firefighter, always a firefighter.  
“There! A lake!”  
“Where?”  
“To the East! On my signal, turn your jets on at full power!”  
“Got it!”  
A second passes. Two. Hovering above the controls, Tokoha tries not to waste time praying.  
“NOW!”  
She slams the controls, and feels the lurch as both she and Shion tug on the net, throwing it out of its trajectory.  
For a second, she thinks they’ve won. And then the ground comes for them, fast.  
“Too fast!”  
Fire wraps around them. Their mad downwards flight slows, barely, as a gigantic ball of flames absorbs their momentum, falling with them.  
She barely has time to recognise the shape of the frozen lake before they all collide with the ice and steam surges around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna do an illustration for this but I didn't have time to finish it and I didn't want to postpone the chapter orz ANYWAY please imagine the loudest, most uncanny otherworldly eagle keen.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Passes all of you a glass of water in advance]  
> (Sorry for the infodump ~~blame trigger not me~~ )

When the steam finally disperses, all Kouji can see is the starry sky above.  
_The ice…_  
“Good thing I told Chris to figure us out some jetpacks, huh?” Tokoha gasps, laying on her back in her smoking armour.  
“We have you to thank for that, Kouji,” Shion says, sitting up. Somehow, even when he doesn't, his voice still has perfect hair. “Your little sacrifice stunt last week made us consider new evacuation scenarios. We really needed more mobility.”  
Kouji sits up with a wince. His ribs had been on the mend, but the week in prison and crashing into a giant ball of flame haven't exactly been the 'taking it easy' he was recommended.  
Chrono, when he finds him, is just lying on his back, silently crying.  
Kouji forces himself to his knees, makes his way to his side.  
“Chrono…”  
“Why,” he whispers.  
He doesn't know what to say.  
Chrono hides his eyes under one of his arms.  
“Why… what am I supposed to do now… I can't save them…” He breathes in, and it comes back out as a sob. “I promised them…” He bites his lip, to no avail. The sobs keep coming. “They're all going to die. All my people. The kids… I said I'd protect them. I told them I'd give my life to protect them. And instead they…”  
He gasps, draws in a shaky breath. Under his arm, tears start running down his cheeks.  
_Chrono_ , Kouji wants to call again, but he stops in his tracks.  
What can he even say? 'Sorry I stopped you'? They both know that he isn't, that neither of them is, really. If Chrono's enraged flames had really collided with whatever Ryuzu had in store, it would have been a massacre. And if Ryuzu came out victorious, if Chrono died, who would there be left to help the Burnish?  
But it's the knowledge that nothing would really have made a difference that hurts the most. Chrono had no means of pressure save pure firepower, because Ryuzu doesn't care about hostages. Meanwhile, Chrono has hundreds of lives to save, and each individual loss is a terrible blow. All he could hope to do was blow up the ship if he was lucky, but with his people inside…  
It stings. It makes _Kouji_ feel sick with frustration. But for Chrono, it must be thousands of times worse.  
“Hey, guys, um, I'm sorry to interrupt, but…”  
He looks back towards Tokoha. She's walked a few meters away from them, and is staring down.  
“… what the hell is _that_?”

'That' turns out to be some kind of domed building under them. They're all laying on a platform of sorts, rather than on the ground itself.  
“Hm, I see,” Shion says, fiddling with his mech's display. “The building was hidden in a cavity under the ice. It doesn't seem to have been in contact with water at all.”  
“Huh?” Tokoha asks, just as another voice booms all around them, making all four jump.  
“Exactly! You're smart, kid!”  
Tokoha yelps, and pulls out her gun. Shion freezes. Kouji gets to his feet. Chrono, rolling to his knees, is already shrouded in flames.  
“Calm down, calm down! You came _just_ at the right time.” A hologram of a tall man materialises between them. “Welcome to my little hideout, Chrono. Kouji Ibuki.” Chrono gasps. “And you're Anjou and Kiba, right?”  
“How do you know our names?” Shion asks.  
“I've hacked the Myoujin Foundation's network. I have access to everything, from emails to security cameras. Although not enough to, say, free a prisoner without them noticing and tightening security. Sorry about that, Ibuki, haha.”  
Chrono's eyes harden.  
“Who _are_ you?”  
“Mind coming inside? I'll explain there. It's safer.”  
A rectangular panel forms itself and slides back from the surface they were standing on, revealing an opening with some stairs going down. Kouji and Tokoha shoot each other looks, equal in their instinctual distrust.  
But to his surprise, it's Chrono who fully stands and walks down the stairs, face hard and determined, as if pushed by an unknown force.  
“… what do we do now?” Tokoha sighs.  
“Follow him.”

They climb out of their mechs and hurry down the stairs after Chrono, and Kouji who's left the last scraps of his battered mech behind. At the bottom, they find an elevator. Calling flames to his hand, Chrono steps into it, face still set in a calm yet fierce expression. Like an incarnation of the phoenix he was just minutes ago, implacable yet desperately pushing forward.  
They follow. The elevator shoots downward.  
“Oh, good, you all came!”  
The man's hologram blinks into existence between them again, making three of them jump. He's smiling, as if completely unable to read the mood or realise that all of them are trying to stop a tragedy from happening.  
Or as if he was unaware of what was going on behind closed doors at the Myoujin Foundation, despite his claims that he knows everything there.  
Something about his eyes is familiar, but with his cheerful expression chilling Kouji's spine, he can't place what.  
“So,” Shion says, “Who _are_ you? Care to tell us why you're borrowing Professor Shindou's image?”  
“Who?” Tokoha asks, blinking.  
“Professor Shindou. He was one of the scientists who worked on the same team as Ryuzu Myoujin, before it became the Foundation. He died about fifteen years ago. Your brother might remember him, although I think he was too young to have ever worked with him.”  
“Hahaha, you're well informed, Kid. But I'm not borrowing anything. The one standing before you is Rive Shindou in the flesh!” He pauses. “Well, not quite in the flesh.”  
None of them laugh.  
“How are you the Professor if you're dead?” Tokoha asks. Her hand is firm on her gun at her side, and although he doubts it'll do much good against a hologram, Kouji is thankful for how quick and efficient she can be with it.  
“See, I kinda _saw_ that coming, so I made a backup save, so to speak. I copied everything I could from my brain and stored it safely here, in this lab. Ryuzu didn't know about this place; it'd just been abandoned before he joined the team. Lack of funding, you know.”  
“So what are you, then?” Shion asks. “A computer?”  
“Precisely!”  
“If you have access to everything,” Chrono asks, quiet but as cutting as a blade of ice, “why didn't you reveal everything to the public? Why did you let him torture and kill people?”  
Rive Shindou's cheerful face falls.  
“… it's complicated.”  
“You asked us to come here,” Kouji says. “You might as well explain.”  
“… it's complicated,” Rive Shindou sighs again. “And it starts fifteen years ago. Or rather, eighteen years ago.”  
He looks right at Kouji as he says that, and Kouji's heart freezes.  
_Eighteen years ago._  
Eighteen years ago, when he was freshly orphaned and laying in a hospital bed. Eighteen years ago, when he was struggling his way out of a Burnish fire.  
Eighteen years ago, when Ryuzu Myoujin became a hero by saving him, and started his public and scientific ascension.  
The elevator stops. Shindou's hologram noiselessly walks out of it, and they all follow. Tokoha with her gun. Chrono with his flame. Kouji, with the sinking feeling that everything about his life may have been a lie.  
On a screen in front of them, a photograph appears. Men and women of all ages, in lab coats. Some of them, Kouji has seen before, at the Foundation, although most of them look much older by now. A couple, he remembers seeing as a child, but now that he thinks about it, he hasn't seen or heard of them in years. And on the side, Rive Shindou, a perfect image of the man recreated by his own computer mind, bending just slightly to lean on the shoulder of Ryuzu Myoujin, grinning and doing a victory sign with his free hand.  
Ryuzu, like Kouji remembers him from his youth. Looking considerably less tired but still perfect, as if his rigid beauty transcended time.  
“Technically,” Shindou says, “you could say it started twenty years ago when we made this team… but really it started when Ryuzu joined us. We were dedicated to working on anti-Burnish technology—fire retardants that work on Burnish flames, the metal alloys you use on your firefighting mechs, the like—but Ryuzu had different ambitions. He wanted to get to the bottom of the question. Know _why_ and _how_ the Burnish burned. So after he saved you and got accepted in the lab… he started researching that on his downtime.”  
“You seem rather close,” Shion says, voice dripping with implications.  
Shindou sighs.  
“Yeah. I liked him, and his project _fascinated_ me. So I helped him. We sort of split off from the main group, and worked part time in a secondary lab of our own. On our own project.”  
“What project?” Tokoha asks.  
“He wanted… to learn to harness the Burnish's flames. To use them for humanity's benefit.”  
“Just like Mamoru said…”  
“That's always been the official version of it. It's both true and not.”  
“He wants to harness them, but it has nothing to do with stopping them or creating them from scratch,” Kouji says, piecing the information together. “He just wanted to understand how it worked so he could use the Burnish.”  
Shion and Tokoha turn towards him, shock on their faces. Chrono doesn't move at all.  
“He's using them as fuel,” Kouji says. “I bet the Parnassus is loaded with Burnish to power its engine by now. Am I wrong?”  
“ _What_!?” Tokoha hisses.  
Chrono's eyes squeeze shut.  
“So that was why.”  
“As happy as I am that you all seem to know what's going on,” Shion says, “I don't. Care to enlighten us, Professor?”  
“Freeze Force led an operation on the shelter I built,” Chrono says before Shindou can answer. “I'm the only one who escaped. I thought he just wanted to experiment on them, but if what Ibuki has been saying is true…”  
“He's right,” Shindou sighs. “His plan has always been to use the Burnish's power to change the world how he wanted it. But very early in the process, he discovered something that hastened his plans.”  
“The state of the Earth's core?” Kouji asks.  
“Yes. It was both a catalyst and the answer he sought.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“The reason the Earth's core is heating up isn't an after effect of the fire. The flames that are linked to the Burnish live there. But the Burnish don't actually produce them. They're alive. They've always been alive.”  
“Of course they are,” Chrono says, quietly.  
“Ryuzu discovered what the flames were, and what they were made of; I discovered where they come from.”  
“Which is?” Shion asks, voice fakely patient.  
“The flames—the Promare, as we called them—come from a different universe. A parallel universe. Thirty years ago, something caused a rift in the fabric of space time. And the Promare—incandescent life forms who have always lived to burn—made their way to our universe. They live in the Earth's core. And from there, they come into contact with humans whose feelings resonate with theirs.”  
“Hold up,” Tokoha says. “So what you mean to say is, it's not just some energy source within them? They're, like, alien fire symbiots?”  
“And it's a human's desire to burn or set something on fire that makes them bond to that human,” Shion continues.  
“Precisely. The Promare are pure energy, but for all intents and purposes, they are alive. Their life is just different from ours. And once a human is bound to them, they can call on to each other. The human calls on the Promare for aid. The Promare call onto their human to burn. Symbiotic is a pretty good way of describing it.”  
“They're _alive_ and he wants to use them as _fuel?!_ ” Tokoha cries out.  
“It's not just the flames,” Chrono says.  
They turn towards him. His hands are clenched at his sides, white.  
“Why bother separating them when you can just use the whole Burnish as a source. Force them to call on the Promare until they burn themselves out. That's what it was from the start, isn't it?”  
“So Mamoru… wait, what about my brother? Is he safe?”  
“Mamoru Anjou tried to investigate the deeper levels of Ryuzu's laboratory. They caught him, but he's safe for now. Looks like they're forcing him to work on the Parnassus.”  
“You've mentioned that several times now,” Shion says. “What is it?”  
“It's a spaceship. When Ryuzu found out the Promare were heating up the core, he started thinking of using the Burnish's energy to run away to another planet. We'd leave Earth and the Promare behind, and live somewhere safe. No more Promare, no more Burnish. Humanity could start over again.”  
“Not all of humanity,” Kouji says quietly, and Shindou's face darkens a little.  
“… no. Not all of humanity.”  
“What?” Tokoha gasps. “Then how many—”  
“It can take ten thousand people,” Kouji says. “He said they're selected by computers. He wants to bring only the elite.”  
“Then… what about everyone else?”  
“That's the part that's really becoming a problem. You see, if he causes the Burnish too much pain…”  
“The Promare will strike back,” Chrono says quietly, implacably. “We are one. They answer our pain just like we answer theirs. If he pushes the Burnish too far, the Promare will become uncontrollable. The power I was using earlier will be _nothing_ compared to all of the core's power.”  
“S-so what? The Earth just goes up in flames?”  
“Basically,” Shindou says.  
“And you didn't _think_ to do something to stop it until now!?”  
“Like I said, my hands were tied. With the ship this close to launch, I was thinking of contacting Mamoru Anjou and helping him sabotage the reactor, but…”  
“'But'?” Chrono asks, turning towards him, eyes blazing.  
A pause.  
“… but now you're here, there's no need for that! I have something that can help you take down Ryuzu's ship. He's fully protected against fire, but doesn't expect to be targeted with more traditional weapons! Which is why I've spent the last few years perfecting this little baby.”  
The photograph on the screen disappears, replaced by an image of a large mech.  
“I thought he was _on_ to something, but didn't think about it the right way. So I researched the interaction between Burnish and Promare more while I was here, and came up with a way to channel a Burnish's Promare without hurting them. And so—”  
“And so you think it'll make us forget that you were part of this from the start,” Shion states coldly.  
Shindou freezes.  
“You've been going 'Ryuzu this' and 'Ryuzu that' since we came in,” Shion continues, “but you were working on the same project, weren't you? Or are you going to tell us that you weren't aware your experimental engine was hurting the Burnish you were using?”  
With all eyes on him, Shindou's smile finally fully falls.  
“Tell us the truth,” Chrono says.  
“… I was aware.”  
Chrono's face goes cold.  
“I went along with the experiments. I thought we could perfect the engine to avoid causing pain, but I didn't worry too much about it, or how long it would take. When we found out the Earth was doomed, I had other priorities. I had… people I wanted to keep safe at all costs.” He sighs. “Then an accident happened during one of the experiments. It… woke me up. I decided to make a perfected, non-harmful prototype as quickly as possible, but Ryuzu didn't agree. He said the pain was the Burnish's destiny. That's when I understood he'd lost it. That he'd stop at nothing.”  
“Took you long enough,” Tokoha mutters.  
“Once I started to oppose him, I knew I was in danger… he was ready to do _anything_ to reach his goals. So I hid the resources I could here, and saved my consciousness into this computer. And I was right to be wary. When I came back, well…”  
A different image on the screen, that of Ryuzu with a gun under Rive Shindou's chin. The moment of impact.  
“They ruled it as a suicide,” Shion says. “His masquerade was well prepared.”  
Kouji's head spins. Knowing Ryuzu was ready to let thousands of people die was already sickening. But watching the man he'd looked up to for all these years, gathered courage from for all these years, kill someone in cold blood, from this close, shakes him from the inside out.  
_He was a murderer. He was a murderer all along. He didn't just go down the wrong path. All these years ago, when I was still a child, he had already killed, and was planning to kill more._  
“I tried to work on the prototype from here. I wanted to make an engine that would allow a strong Burnish to use their power freely and without risk, and help them fight with normal weapons. That's Deus X Machina, the mech I showed you earlier. The only problem is, it needs a copilot. But I thought I'd find one.”  
“Find a copilot?” Shion asks. “Did you have a specific Burnish already in mind then?”  
Shindou opens his mouth to answer, but just as he was about to, a strangled gasp breaks out of Chrono's throat.  
“Chrono!?”  
They all turn to him. Even Shindou takes a step forward, as if he could actually take his shoulders and steady him.  
He grips his heart and shakes, eyes wide.  
The earth under them groans.  
“What's going on?” Shion asks, but Kouji knows it before Chrono's tearful eyes come up to meet theirs.  
“It's started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "this seems suspiciously rive/ryuzu-y" yeah it is.
> 
> Anyway I cut this chapter in two because that was a hell of an infodump but I'll try to post the next one really soon <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay there it is. I'm not THAT late this time.
> 
> I, uh, hope you like action scenes, because there's going to be a lot of them from now on.

“Engine charge: ten percent!”  
“Is the keystone holding up?”  
“Yes. Its conductance is identical to the preliminary tests. Raise the charge to thirty percent!”  
Mamoru sits at his desk in the lab that used to feel like home and that has unfortunately been his actual living space for the last few days.  
Behind him, two armed guards keep him under close scrutiny. Right until the actual launch, they had him actually working on the engine, but now, with every step so delicate, they’ve only kept him on hand in case of an emergency. So all he gets to do is sit here and listen to people talk about a young girl like an object and condemn the large majority of the world’s population to death.  
Or so they think. Mamoru might have gladly risked or given his life for his sister, but he’s not above risking both of them for the sake of everyone else. That’s one thing Ryuzu Myoujin seems to have miscalculated.  
The other thing Ryuzu Myoujin has miscalculated is that guards who _aren’t_ well trained in computers can stare at his screen all they want, but they can’t tell a line of code from another. And more importantly, the concept of working outside a graphical interface hasn’t occurred to them. If they had been able to see a map on his screen, they might have guessed that he didn’t _only_ do the work he was assigned to do, the one that his colleagues oh so carefully checked once he was done with it. But topological data that he swiped raw from the technical data he _has_ been given to work with, well. Nothing looks more like a series of numbers on a screen than another series of numbers on a screen.  
He knows, now, exactly where his lab has been relocated. Right next to the engine, or as close as was safely possible. He knows which paths will lead him there.  
So close. Sickeningly close. To the engine itself, and all the people caught within it, but also to its core, where the _missing piece_ he’d been trying to craft for so long to channel the engine’s power on a large enough scale has been replaced with a _person_. A single Burnish, powerful enough to withstand the flow of flames being run through her. For a short moment at least. For the couple of hours that have been calculate to be more than enough to jump and to safely land. Although the jump itself will burn through most of that.  
It sickens him. He hasn’t even seen this girl’s face, only knows her as more numbers on his screen, from mundane measurements to the much less mundane data on her flame output, on how much fire has been run through her without disintegrating her flesh before, but all he can think is that this idea that strength and power are meant to be _put to use_ is rotten to the core. He sees it now, permeating all of Myoujin’s plans, from his selection of the citizens he boarded onto his ship to his commodification of the Burnish’s power.   
He doesn’t know her face. But instead he sees Tokoha, angry, kind, passionate Tokoha, whose very strengths could become her undoing.  
What options does Myoujin leave any of them, in this world he’s trying to create? Be powerful, skilled, and be put to use like an object where he deems you most useful. Or be unskilled, unhealthy, wounded enough, physically or mentally, for him to consider you useless, and be left to die.  
His own excitement over the Burnish’s possible integration under his guidance tastes like bile on his tongue.  
But there’s nothing he can do yet. All this preparation, and his hands are still tied, because his guards are so painfully _close_. No matter what he tried, they’d be on him within a second, and he’d be frozen or handcuffed before he could go anywhere. And just causing a commotion won’t be enough to stop the launch.  
 _There’s got to be a way… if I can’t get an opening, maybe I can still break a computer and incapacitate everyone…_  
Myoujin’s face flickers onto the communicator screen.  
“Is the engine behaving properly?”  
“Yes sir! No irregularities!”  
“Good. Turn on the anti-gravity propulsion, and open the warp gate.”

Chrono feels the pull before anything else.   
It's a tug on his lungs that knocks the air out of him, like someone's hooked a line into his very heart and pulled. And then his entire body feels it, that stretch, that _tear_ , like half of him is wrenched away.  
He gasps.  
Whispers course through him. The flames—the Promare—in him are murmuring to each other, restless, the closest they can get to actual worry. Over the years, the more he's heard their voice, the closer to his their emotions have become, like they've learned from each other; now the anxious feeling that spreads through them from the network of thoughts that links all Promare is getting louder and firmer, like a fully formed emotion, and as he tries to swallow it down enough to talk, another wave of tearing comes and he grasps at his chest, choking.  
They're miles away. And yet, he can feel it. His people, those bound to him through the Promare, screaming.  
Ibuki's calling his name. The man in the hologram is moving towards him; he wants to step back, but is struggling too much to _breathe_.  
He looks up, desperate.  
“It's started,” he whispers. _It's started. He's going to kill them._  
The Earth is crying with it too, now. It shakes, and bends, the flames trying to reach for the hearts bound to them.  
 _I need to stop him._  
“… use it,” Rive Shindou says. “We don't have much time. You, Ibuki, you're a good pilot, aren't you? If the two of you take Machina, you can break through his defenses and stop him. Maybe even reach the engine.”  
“Us?” Ibuki gasps.  
Chrono straightens, pulling his flames tight around himself, into himself. Trying to hold on against the pull.  
“Chrono,” Rive Shindou says, turning to him. “You have what it takes to power and control it. You can take Ryuzu down. I know you can.” He smiles. “You're the leader of the Mad Burnish, right?”  
“… are we really gonna trust him?” Anjou asks, but Chrono straightens fully. He's already made up his mind.  
“I'm going. I won't forgive you, but I have to save them. That comes first.”  
Ibuki rests a hand on his shoulder. He looks back and up, surprised.  
“I'll help you. I owe it to you. And to them.”  
“… I suppose we have no choice,” Kiba sighs. “Professor, can you send all the data you have on Myoujin's acts and on your murder to my mech's computer? I'll try to turn the people and some of his staff against him.”  
“Sure thing! I charged them with extra fuel while you were here, too!”  
“How convenient,” Anjou mutters.  
“Oh, and Anjou. I think Ryuzu's using you as hostage against your brother. If he knows for sure that you're safe, it might be easier to get him to help.”  
“… I'm gonna feed this asshole his own—”  
It feels strange. For these people he barely knows to be teaming up with him. Anjou and Kiba probably want to protect Earth most of all, but even they were horrified at the way the Burnish were used.  
It feels strange, to be considered human again. To be seen with any sympathy by someone who isn't like him.  
Maybe, in other circumstances, the four of them could have been friends. But for now, they can be allies, at least.  
He brings his hand up to rest on Ibuki's. The young man's eyes, usually haunted and desperate, are full of determination.  
“… where's Machina?” he asks, turning away from Ibuki and towards Rive Shindou. “We can't waste any more time.”

They're brought down another elevator while Anjou and Kiba run back up to their own mechs.  
“Are you sure about this?” Chrono asks, quietly. “You care about him, don't you?”  
“… he saved me,” Ibuki says. “But I can't forgive what he's doing. And you kept me safe when you could have killed me. I know which side I'm on.”  
“I'm not trying to, but we might have to kill him if it comes down to it. Are you ready for that?”  
“Do you want to?”  
“… no. There's been enough death. If I can make him live the rest of his life with that weight, that's enough for me. But we might not have a choice. And I can't take the risk of having you hesitate at the last minute.”  
“Then I will do it if we have to. But otherwise, I'll do all I can to help you avoid it. Does that sound okay with you?”  
Despite everything, Chrono smiles. It's the adrenaline slowly filling his veins, the flames slowly heating his blood. The Promare, whispering ever louder.  
“Sounds perfect to me. Let's do this.”

The Earth shakes again as they climb into the mech.  
“Guys?” Tokoha's voice comes from the communicator. “We need to hurry. A volcano erupted to the East.”  
Kouji gets into position as Chrono slides into the engine behind him, and activates his own communicator channel.  
“We're in position. Go on ahead, we'll catch up.”  
“Gotcha! Shion, you got all your stuff?”  
“The data's loaded, ready to go.”  
“Chrono,” Shindou says, his face popping up on a screen, “you need to synchronise your Promare to the engine. Let them spread through the system.”  
“Mm.”  
He closes his eyes. Flames flicker around him, then shoot from his fingertips, spreading through the entire enclosed space, and send tendrils into the multitude of holes in its surface.  
The mech comes to life, straightening, its machinery humming, every light and screen blinking on.  
“Got it.” He pauses. “Ibuki, you too.”  
“Huh?”  
Tendrils reach out from Chrono's chest and to Kouji. He freezes, holding back the nauseating, instinctual fear.  
“It's okay,” Chrono says quietly. “It won't hurt you. I need to feel your movements to power and synchronise it properly. It'll cut down the input lag dramatically.”  
Swallowing, Kouji nods. The flames wrap around him, directly against his skin, almost like a skintight suit.  
Their heat is as gentle as an embrace.  
Chrono opens his eyes.  
“Ready.”  
The Earth shakes again.  
“Hurry up,” Shindou says, face finally serious, without artifice. “This place is about to come down.”  
“What about you?” Kouji asks.  
Shindou smiles, derisive.  
“It's fine. My job here is done. I should've died a long time ago anyway.”  
Flames burst out of the floor. Once more, their reflection on his eyes strikes you with familiarity.  
“Ibuki. Let's go.”  
Kouji nods, grabs the controls, and shoots out of the slowly collapsing facility.  
Shindou smiles.  
“Good luck, Chrono.”

They fly towards Promepolis, as fire lashes out of the Earth.  
The mech is fast, but cumbersome. Kouji thought himself a decent pilot, but the faster they go, the less he feels like he controls the thing.  
“What's wrong?” Chrono asks. “You're getting tense,” he explains as Kouji freezes a little.  
“It's powerful, but I'm having a hard time controlling it. It's fine as long as we're going in a straight line, but if we have to do any actual combat… if they send Freeze Force after us…”  
“… I think I destroyed every Freeze Force helicopter and mech in Promepolis before you got to me earlier,” Chrono admits, sounding a little guilty.  
“… oh.”  
Suddenly his gambit to stop him sounds a lot more foolish. How lucky did he _get_?  
“… I have an idea. But we need to synchronise better first. And… you need to trust me. Really trust me.”  
“… you held my life in your hands twice.”  
The flames around him tighten. Somehow, it feels like a smile.  
“Fair. Let me handle it, then. But first we need to stop them in their tracks. So go as fast as you can.”  
They pass the last mountain top, and Promepolis appears before them, in the distance.  
Part of it has already separated, lifting off towards the sky, where a distortion tears the fabric of space.  
Chrono gasps. Kouji speeds up as much as the engine will allow him.  
“It's so _huge_.”  
And it's lifting up into the sky, noiseless and majestic, carried by the life force of hundreds of people.  
Above it, the distortion is getting larger and larger.  
“Hurry!” Chrono cries out. Kouji shoots forward as fast as he can, aiming straight for the Foundation building, now standing tall at the top of the ship.  
 _Come on…_  
“Guys, watch out!” Tokoha shouts. “They're aiming at you.”  
It's too late to swerve. He activates all the mech's shields, pushes faster, and prays.  
The cannon shoots. He expected a freeze ray, but it's a pure ray of energy that blasts against their shields, shattering most of them.  
 _He's out to kill._  
But it's too late. Their momentum is too strong. They crash through the ray and past it, and right at the pillar supporting Ryuzu's observatory.  
The impact sends them flying. But the pillar groans, slightly, bending subtly out of alignment.  
The ship's ascension slows.  
“… I think they pulled on the engine's power for that blast,” Shion says, quiet.  
In Kouji's ears, Chrono snarls.  
“You'll pay for this, Myoujin.”  
Projectiles shoot towards them. Quickly, Kouji rolls, but the mech is slow. He barely gets away from them.  
“They'll just keep us on the defensive like this,” he mutters.  
“I'm almost ready,” Chrono says. “Keep moving, and shoot at that pillar. If we make it unstable enough, they can't risk warping.”  
A screen buzzes to life in front of Kouji.  
“Kouji, is that you?” Chris says. “Tokoha said you were in that mech.”  
Kouji dodges another volley of ice missiles, and shoots.  
“It's me.”  
“How does it even _run_.”  
“I don't have time to talk. Just help us take down that ship, or we're all dead.”  
“We're on it already. But you guys have every flying mech we have, unless I harvest a jetpack from one of yours. Can't exactly shoot the truck into the air.”  
“Help us survive this, and maybe you can make one that does,” Tokoha calls, before yelling: “Mamoru! Mamoru, can you hear me?”  
“Give me another minute, Tokoha,” Chris sighs. “I'm almost done hacking.”  
“Then hack more and talk less!”  
“Ibuki,” Chrono says quietly. “Deal with this volley and take cover if you can.”  
“Got it.”  
He speeds up as best as he can, sends more projectiles flying rather than dodging them, and uses the momentum to slide behind a raised panel.  
“Hang on tight, and don't panic!”  
Before he can brace, more fire shoots towards him, covers him, the thin layer of flames wrapping thicker around him. It covers his hands, his face, even his eyes, like a visor. He doesn't even dare breathe, for fear of swallowing them.  
And around them, flames spread and form, black and solid, like the armour of the Mad Burnish, holding Machina's parts in position and growing it into a different shape, taller, slimmer.   
And somehow, Kouji can almost feel them.  
“The flames and I are one,” Chrono says, his voice fond. “And now, so are you. Almost.”  
“What do I do?!”  
“The flames will feel every movement you make. Pilot like you normally would. We'll move along with you.” They tighten on his shoulders, like a reassuring hand. “Oh, and don't forget the tail this time. It's a great weapon.”  
And he hears. The whispers of the flames just on the edges of his hearing, like a light that flickers on one's peripheral vision, only to disappear when one looks straight at them. They whisper and cradle him, the same voices that he heard crying a couple of hours before, the same voices that once tore into him, screaming to _burn, burn, burn_.  
They embrace him and sing, and it feels like Chrono's own hands are on his shoulders, around them, guiding him.  
They are one. And, at the same time, a multitude.  
 _Is that what it's like, to be Burnish?_  
He once thought it a wretched existence. Now, it feels both beautiful and terrifying. He could lose himself in it so easily.  
 _I understand now…_  
He understands, just a little, how Chrono's heart can burn so bright.  
“Will you guide me?” he murmurs, dropping into a fighting position.  
Chrono's smile, fierce and warm, brushes against every part of him.  
“Of course.”

He jumps out from behind his cover, and shoots straight up, at the observatory. Straight away, the cannons point at them, but this time, he evades them easily, the fire-enhanced mech moving with him seamlessly. It's like the entire thing is just an extension of his body, more natural even than Chris's custom-built mechs. And it moves on the surface of the spaceship as easily as one would skate on ice, as fluid as Chrono's own armour had been, the sleekness of its shape only contributing to its speed.   
He rushes towards the pillar, and as he gets within range, Chrono tightens his hold on him and guides him, giving him the right impulse at the precise moment he needs; his body does the rest, twisting on reflex and grabbing on to the pillar.  
“Use the tail,” Chrono whispers, and in his mind he wraps the tail of their fire around the pillar, moving his body along with it, and they _do_. The fire wraps around it, and he swings himself on it and _up_ , towards the observatory where he knows Myoujin is waiting.  
The cannons turn on them from above. Kouji jumps, and tears them away.  
“Good job, Kouji!” Chris calls. “I mean, if that's still you.”  
“It's still me,” Kouji murmurs, just as Chris calls:  
“Tokoha, you're on!”  
“Mamoru!” Tokoha calls, and Chris must have successfully hacked every system in the ship, because even the outside speakers are resonating with it. “Mamoru, it's me, Tokoha! Listen, you can't let that ship take off! If you do, the Earth is doomed!”  
“Professor Myoujin has deceived you all,” Shion says, displaying the images he has of Shindou's murder, of the Parnassus's plans that were made over ten years before, of the Burnish caught in the engine. “If you go along with his plans, do you think he'll have any second thoughts about eliminating you next?”  
“Kouji,” Chris calls, “don't slow down. Take them down while they're distracted trying to deal with this.”  
He doesn't waste time answering. Instead, he grabs on the gaping socket where a broken cannon used to be, and slings himself up to the observation deck, to the transparent panels separating Myoujin from the rest of the world.  
And there he is. Looking at them through the glass.  
Kouji barely feels his own anger and betrayal before the undiluted _hate_ that spreads through Chrono's fire hits him.  
“C-Chrono,” he gasps.  
Myoujin still looks at them, face hard. Chrono's anger flares again, but he pulls it under control, letting Kouji breathe again.  
“Ibuki,” he grits out. “ _Now_.”  
Kouji pulls back his arm, and punches at the glass.  
It doesn't shatter. But the deck does rattle, the people inside thrown about, save for Ryuzu and those who managed to hang on fast enough.  
“Again!” Chrono calls.  
He hits again. The faintest cracks start spreading across the glass.  
Ryuzu's calm face pulls into a cold snarl.  
It's only a fraction of second, but it's enough for Kouji to lose his rhythm. And before they can hit again, Ryuzu's shouting orders, and his men being pulled down towards a lower level.  
“Hit it again! While we still can!”  
“Wait,” he calls before Chrono can grab his arms and do it for him. “He's up to something!”  
Chrono stops in his tracks, just on time for them to see and dodge a ray of ice coming from a different angle. They let go of the observation deck, falling and rolling onto the surface of the spaceship.  
“Damnit, we almost _had_ him,” Chrono hisses.  
“I'm sorry—”  
“No, you were right. If we got hit, we'd have fallen anyway.” Again, a gentle squeeze. “But now we don't know what he's up to, and the ship's still moving.”  
“I'm working on it,” Chris says, “but we haven't managed to hear _back_ from the ship. Even if they're mutinying in there, we won't know until they stop everything or manage to call us back.”  
“The navigators weren't anywhere close to mutiny,” Kouji states, downcast.  
“We can't waste time worrying about that,” Chrono says. “Look, something's happening.”  
Kouji looks up. Metalic parts are moving around the observation deck, wrapping around it, altering its shape. A second layer of transparent material comes to cover half of the glass, while the rest is obscured by pure white, reflective armour.  
“… are you kidding me,” Chrono breathes.  
“Great, _more_ mechs that I don't know,” Chris sighs.  
The observation deck, now outfitted with limbs and a large wheel like the cylinder of a gun spinning behind it, detaches from its lower half.  
“I think that's quite _enough_ , Kouji,” Ryuzu's voice broadcasts. “It's time you children learned your place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Good fucking bye Rive~~


End file.
